Troy Denning

 

 

 

[05 jan 2003-scanned for #bookz]

[06 apr 2003-proofed for #bookz by friendy]

[08 dec 2003- lit format by drb]

 

 

 

To Andria
For advice, encouragement, and more

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people helped make this book possible. I would like to thank them all, especially Curtis Smith for introducing me to Star Wars writing all those years ago; Mary Kirchoff, who drew my attention to the possibility; and Matthew Caviness, Kevin McConnell, and Ross Marton, three special Star Wars fans who were never far from my thoughts during the writing. Thanks are also due to: Mike Friedman and Jenni Smith; fellow NJO writers R. A. Salvatore - what a setup! - Mike Stackpole, Jim Luceno, Kathy Tyers, Greg Keyes, Elaine Cunningham, Aaron Allston, and Matt Stover, who all contributed to this story through endless compromising and brainstorming; Shell Shapiro and all the people at Del Rey, especially Chris Schluep, Kathleen David, and Lisa Collins; to Sue Rosstoni and Lucy Autrey Wilson at Lucasfilm, as well as Chris Cerasi, Leland Chee, Dan Wallace, and everyone else there who made this project such a pleasure. And of course, thanks to George Lucas for letting me play in his galaxy.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Alema Rar; Jedi Knight (female Twi'lek)
Anakin Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)
Bela Hara; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)
Borsk Fey'lya; chief of state (male Bothan)
C-3PO; protocol droid
Cilghal; Jedi Master (female Mon Calamari)
Eryl Besa; Jedi Knight (female human)
Ganner Rhysode; Jedi Knight (male human)
Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon (male human)
Jacen Solo; Jedi Knight (male human)
Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)
Jovan Drark; Jedi Knight (male Rodian)
Krasov Hara; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)
Kyp Durron; Jedi Master (male human)
Lando Calrissian; resistance fighter (male human)
Leia Organa Solo; former New Republic diplomat (female human)
Lowbacca; Jedi Knight (male Wookiee)
Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)
Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)
Nom Anor; executor (male Yuuzhan Vong)
R2-D2; astromech droid
Raynar Thul; Jedi Knight (male human)
Saba Sebatyne; Jedi Knight (female Barabel)
Tahiri Veila; Jedi Knight (female human)
Tekli; Jedi Knight (female Chandra-Fan)
Tenel Ka; Jedi Knight (female human)
Tesar Sebatyne; Jedi Knight (male Barabel)
Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)
Ulaha Kore; Jedi Knight (female Bith)
Vergere; adviser to Tsavong Lah (female Fosh)
Viqi Shesh; senator (female human)
Zekk; Jedi Knight (male human)

They appeared without warning from beyond the edge of galactic space: a warrior race called the Yuuzhan Vong, armed with surprise, treachery, and a bizarre organic technology that proved a match - too often more than a match - for the New Republic and its allies. Even the Jedi, under the leadership of Luke Skywalker, found themselves thrown on the defensive, deprived of their greatest strength. For somehow, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to be utterly devoid of the Force.

The alien assault caught the New Republic unawares. Before they could rally and strike back, several worlds were destroyed and countless beings killed - among them the Wookiee Chewbacca, loyal friend and partner of Han Solo.

The New Republic won the day - the first of a series of costly victories. Behind that alien advance fleet came a seemingly endless stream of ships and warriors. The planet Ithor fell to Yuuzhan Vong treachery - a devastating loss for the New Republic and a personal one for Jedi Corran Horn, who took the blame.

The New Republic government unraveled a little more with each setback. Even the Jedi Knights began to splinter under the strain. And while Luke Skywalker struggled with the dilemma of how to handle the Jedi, he struggled with a private crisis, as well: His beloved wife, Mara, was ill and possibly dying from a debilitating and utterly mystifying disease, and it was taking much of her energy simply to stay alive. Lacking strong leadership, some of the Jedi fell under the sway of Kyp Durron, who advocated using every available resource to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong - including unbridled aggression, which could lead only to the dark side. Even the Solo children - Jedi Knights all - found themselves on different sides of the argument.

Consumed with grief and guilt for Chewbacca's death, Han Solo turned away from his family, seeking expiation in action - and foiled a Yuuzhan Vong plot to eliminate the Jedi. He returned with what seemed to be an antidote to Mara Jade Skywalker's illness, but not even that victory could erase the loss of his dearest friend - or mend his marriage to Leia.

Leia, too, was beset by guilt. She had disregarded a vision of the future, and now she blamed herself for the devastation of the Hapan fleet at Fondor - a mass destruction caused by the uncontrollable power of Centerpoint Station, a weapon armed by her younger son, Anakin.

The elder Solo son, Jacen, also had a vision, one in which he saw the galaxy moving toward darkness. Afraid of tipping the balance farther, the young Jedi temporarily abandoned the use of the Force altogether. Only the near-loss of his mother, Leia, compelled him to return to the Force.

But in saving Leia's life Jacen had bested none other than the great Yuuzhan Vong warmaster Tsavong Lah. In retaliation, the warmaster declared a temporary truce on the condition that all Jedi - and Jacen in particular - be handed over to the Yuuzhan Vong.

Now the Jedi were being hunted. When the youngsters at the Jedi academy were threatened, Anakin Solo raced off to help, going undercover among the Yuuzhan Vong lower castes to rescue his friend Tahiri Veila. He ended up a hero - but the Jedi Temple on Yavin 4 was destroyed.

Luke and Mara found themselves declared traitors by the New Republic. As a pregnant Mara struggled with the recurrence of her disease, Luke began to assert his leadership over the Jedi. With Jaina Solo's help, Kyp Durron convinced Luke and the military to let him lead a mission to destroy a Yuuzhan Vong superweapon. The mission was successful ... but Jaina learned, too late, that what they had destroyed was not a weapon but a worldship in the making - one filled with civilians and intended for Yuuzhan Vong young. Once again the balance seemed to be tipping toward darkness. The only ray of light was the birth of Luke and Mara's son, Ben Skywalker.

Their new worldship destroyed and their attempts to capture the Jedi frustrated, the Yuuzhan Vong have declared the truce broken. Once again worlds will fall, as the alien forces push inexorably Coreward. And the Jedi may be the last hope in a galaxy that no longer wants them ...

 

Chapter 1

The dark sliver of a distant starliner crept into view, a blue needle of ion efflux pushing it across the immense sweep of a brilliant orange sun. Like a million such suns in the Core region alone, this one lacked any world with a civilization or even a sapient species, and it was too inconsequential for any name except an obsolete Imperial survey number. With so much emptiness, so many planets untouched, it seemed to Jaina Solo that there should have been no need for fighting, that there should have been room for all. But comfort was always easier to steal than to earn, peace easier to break than to keep - as her mother so often said - and so the Yuuzhan Vong had invaded a galaxy that might have welcomed them with open arms. It was a mistake the aliens had yet to understand, but one day, Jaina knew ... one day the Jedi would teach them.

R2-D2 chirped an inquiry from the droid station at the rear of the Jade Shadow's flight deck.

"Stay connected, Artoo." Jaina did not turn around. "They still haven't sent the signal, and Mara needs her rest."

The droid whistled a lengthy objection.

Jaina glanced at the interface readout, then threw her hands into the air. "Fine. If that's what she said, go wake her up."

R2-D2 unplugged and whirred off toward the passenger cabin, leaving Jaina alone on the flight deck of the Jade Shadow. Even in a standby orbit, with all systems powered down and the ion drives resting cold and quiet, the vessel felt more like a suit of formfitted battle armor than a seventy-ton starship. The flow-form seat, drop-deck helm, and full-view canopy gave her the sense of floating in open space, while a new retinal tracker kept the heads-up status holos centered just below her plane of vision. Communications and countermeasures could be controlled from an array of glide switches on the throttle; a similar set on the stick managed sensors, weapons, and shields. Even the life-support system could be regulated by voice with an astromech unit plugged into the flight deck droid station. It was the perfect cockpit, and when the time came to have her own ship, Jaina intended to duplicate every detail - especially the seating arrangement, with the pilot alone down low in the front and the navigator and copilot seated side by side behind her. She liked that part the best.

Jaina's reverie was interrupted by a sudden sense of deep disquiet, an unexpected stirring in the Force that soon built to a strange feeling of frenzy. She opened herself to it further and experienced an instant of terrible longings and ravenous hunger, not quite evil, but dark and feral - and brutal enough to make her gasp and withdraw from its touch.

A cold sweat running down her brow, Jaina slid the throttle comm switch to intercom and called Mara to the flight deck. While she waited, she studied the sensors. There was nothing unexpected, but Jaina knew better than to place too much faith in the instruments. They had put the Shadow into orbit around the orange sun's closest planet, a rubble-ringed magma ball little more than twenty million kilometers from its star. Without R2-D2 at his station making constant resolution adjustments, all she could see was electromagnetic blast.

Catching a glimmer of movement in the canopy reflections, Jaina glanced at an activation reticle in the front of the cockpit. A small section of plexalloy opaqued into a mirror, and she saw the willowy form of Mara Jade Skywalker slipping onto the flight deck. Mara's cascade of red-gold hair was a tangle of sleep snarls, but her complexion was no longer quite so ashen nor her green eyes quite so sunken. Jaina stood and, feeling a little like a child caught with her hand under the candy dropper, turned to vacate the pilot's station.

Mara waved her down. "Sit. You're entitled." She dropped into the navigator's chair, sweetening the filter-scrubbed air with a hint of talc and stericlean that seemed to cling to her even with her new baby thousands of light-years away. She lifted her chin toward the distant starliner. "That our two troublemakers?"

"The transponder identifies it as the Nebula Chaser," Jaina said. R2-D2 plugged back into the droid station and confirmed the identity with a chirp. "But there's been no rendezvous signal, and a moment ago I felt something, uh, strange in the Force."

Mara nodded. "It's still there. But I don't think it's our passengers. It doesn't feel right."

"Nothing feels right about this," Jaina said. A thousand-meter Corellian cruiser with a customized Hoersch-Kessel sublight drive, the Nebula Chaser had already traversed half the face of the orange sun. It was now the size of Jaina's finger, with a blue efflux tail three times that long. "They still haven't signaled. Maybe we should give them one more orbit, then duck behind the planet and blow ions."

Mara shook her head. "Luke's right about these two; they're getting people killed with their saber-flashing. We'd better snag them while they need the ride." She pulled her crash webbing over her shoulders and clipped the buckle. "But let's be ready. Power up."

"Me?" Though Jaina had piloted the Shadow before, her aunt had done all the flying on the way out - perhaps because it had been Mara's first real chance to fly her beloved vessel since giving birth to Ben, or perhaps because she had simply needed to keep her mind occupied on her first trip away from her new son. "It's your ship."

"I want to sleep some more anyway. You won't believe what a luxury that is until you have a baby." Mara was silent for a moment, then added sternly, "And that's not a suggestion."

"Check!" Jaina's laugh was a little wistful. At nineteen, she had certainly been on dates, but the war had kept her too busy to pursue any serious relationships. Even now, she was only on temporary leave from Rogue Squadron - until the anti-Jedi sentiment in the senate faded. "Like I'd have time."

Jaina reached over to toggle the ion drives active, but stopped when R2-D2 whistled an alarm. The heads-up display holo contorted through a maddening array of colors and shapes, then settled on the image of a tiny, tube-shaped craft swinging toward them well beneath the luminous haze of the sun's orange corona.

"That explains their silence," Mara said. Though the navigator's station lacked a heads-up holo, the seat was surrounded by a complete set of conventional displays. "Can we can take it, Artoo?"

A message appeared on both displays, sternly informing Jaina and Mara that the representation was not to scale. A series of sensor readouts began to relate the craft's true size, velocity, and probable hull composition. Jaina whistled softly and glanced through the tinted canopy, where the new arrival's speckish silhouette was streaking up behind the Nebula Chaser.

"Looks like a frigate analog," Jaina said. "What do you want to do?"

"The only thing we can." There was a note of caution in Mara's voice that would have seemed foreign to her before Ben's arrival. "Damp down all systems and wait."

 

In Captain Pollux's private quarters aboard the Nebula Chaser, the Rar sisters stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the offbridge vidconsole, their long head-tails - lekku - writhing nervously as they watched a large piece of yorik coral detach from the frigate and start toward the Nebula Chaser. Pocked and lumpy, the smaller craft looked more like a mined-out asteroid than a boarding skiff, but the sensor displays showed the heat signatures of at least a hundred warriors inside. There was also some other creature, larger and colder, but the sisters needed no sensor readings to know this. When they reached out with the Force, they could feel the same hungry presence that had touched them as the frigate appeared from behind the sun. Whatever the Yuuzhan Vong were bringing across, it was attuned to their galaxy in a way its masters would never be.

Alema isolated the creature's heat signature and asked the computer to find a match, then turned to see Numa already at the captain's bunk laying out their disguises: a pair of diaphanous dancing shifts, some face paint, and not much else. Having spent the last year leading a fierce resistance movement on the occupied world of New Plympto, the sisters were certainly the object of the boarding party's search. Fortunately, their enemy would be searching for a single human woman instead of two Twi'lek dancing girls; in their role as the resistance leader, they had taken the precaution of never appearing together and always in disguise, with their lekku hidden beneath the cowl of a Jedi robe.

By the time the sisters changed out of their jumpsuits and returned to the vidconsole, the Yuuzhan Vong were disembarking in the docking bay. With bald sloping brows and saggy eyes rimmed underneath by drooping blue membranes, they were half a head taller than a typical human and much heavier. Their brutal faces had been reshaped into leathery masks of disjoined cartilage and torn flesh, and their powerful bodies were adorned with religious tattoos and ritual disfigurements. Most wore shells of living vonduun crab armor, and all carried the ubiquitous Yuuzhan Vong amphistaff, a serpent that could change on command into a cudgel, razor-sharp polearm, or poison-fanged whip. The most hideous of the warriors, a stoop-shouldered brute with only dark cavities where there should have been a nose, pushed arrogantly past the guards surrounding Captain Pollux.

"You have Jeedai aboard?"

"No," Pollux lied smoothly. "Is that why you stopped us?"

The warrior ignored the captain's question. "You come from Talfaglio ... or Sacorria?"

"You can't believe I would tell you that," Pollux said. "The last I heard, our whole galaxy was at war with you."

The retort drew a grudging sneer of respect. "We are only a picket ship, Captain, and you are carrying refugees. You have nothing to fear from us ... provided you tell me now if you have Jeedai among your passengers."

"We have none." Pollux did not look away when he answered, and his voice did not crack. Even civilian starship captains knew the Yuuzhan Vong were blind to the Force. "Feel free to search."

The warrior cracked a smile. "But I do, Captain. I do." He glanced toward his boarding skiff and, in his own language, ordered, "Duwin tur voxyn."

A seam appeared near the back of the craft and began to open, the yorik coral puckering outward like a set of pursed lips. A pair of yellow oval eyes appeared in the darkness, and Alema felt the hunger in the Force grow more distinct. Then, when the aperture had opened a half meter, an ebony streak shot from the portal and clattered to the deck in a ripple of darkness.

"Clouds of fire!" Numa gasped.

The creature - the voxyn, Alema guessed from what she had learned of the Yuuzhan Vong language - began to pad around the deck on eight bandy legs. Though it stood no higher than a human waist, it was more than four meters long, with a flattish head and an undulating body covered in black scales. A line of coarse sensory bristles ran down its spine, and a white barb protruded from its flickering whip of a tail. The beast circled the captain and his wary guards only once, then went off toward the rear of the docking bay.

In the vidscreen, Pollux fixed his gaze on the Yuuzhan Vong warrior. "Why have you brought that ... that thing on my ship?"

The warrior knocked Pollux to the deck with a backhand slap. "You can't believe I would tell you that," he laughed.

Though Pollux's guards did not appear in danger of attacking, the captain signaled them to stand down and returned to his feet with as much dignity as possible.

Alema rotated an idle narrow-beam antenna toward the dark planet where their rendezvous craft would be waiting, then keyed in a secret Jedi comm channel and began to broadcast what they were seeing. The proximity of the orange sun would interfere with the signal, but signals could be enhanced - and it would be better than nothing if she and Numa failed to escape.

The voxyn circled away from the shuttles and wandered the docking bay for a few minutes more, then exited into an adjoining passage. The sisters lost sight of it until Alema found the right scanner, and by then it was padding down the main boulevard as though it had been riding slidewalks all its life. Along one side of the passage raced a company of Yuuzhan Vong, their distrust of lifeless technology keeping them on the stationary band at the edge of the broad corridor. Eventually, they gave up trying to keep pace and spread through the ship in small groups.

Alema activated a surveillance lock on the voxyn, and for the next hour she and Numa watched it roam the Nebula Chaser's primary activities deck, occasionally circling a petrified refugee or cocking its head at some eruption of machine noise. Finally, it leapt into a decorative water fountain and began to circle the statue of a Calamarian star-urchin, its sensory bristles on end and its yellow eyes fixed on the ceiling. With a drooping feeling, Alema turned to the holopad and called up a three-dimensional schematic of the Nebula Chaser. After a few adjustments, it grew clear that Captain Pollux's cabin was directly over the creature, ten levels above.

"Unpleasant," Numa said. The tips of her lekku flicked sharply. "It seems to have an idea of our location."

"That makes no sense." Alema reached out with the Force and felt the same hungry stirring as before, but now much stronger and distinctly below. "Unless it's using the Force to track us."

A shudder ran down Numa's lekku, and she glared at Alema out of the corner of a slanted eye. "You do have a way of springing to the most alarming explanation, sister."

"Alarming, but no less likely." Alema pointed to the vidscreen, where the voxyn was bounding down the corridor toward the nearest lift tube.

Numa studied the image for a moment, then said, "You seem to have a point. Perhaps we should shut down."

They took a moment to meditate, then began to pull in on themselves, shutting down their presence in the Force. When they could not even feel each other, Alema looked back to the vidscreen. The voxyn had just reached the lift tube. It slapped the activation pad with a front claw, then pushed its foresection into the cylinder and allowed the repulsor current to pull its long body up into the shaft. She traced the lift to an officers' deck outlet less than a hundred meters away, perhaps twice that distance by the time the creature found its way through the corridor grid.

"No good, sister. It still senses us." She turned toward the satchel holding their jumpsuits and lightsabers. "We can catch it as it steps out of the tube."

"Then what?" Numa asked. "The scarheads will know Captain Pollux was lying to them."

"They'll know anyway when it comes scratching at his door." Sorry there was no time to change back into her jumpsuit, Alema pulled her lightsaber from the travel satchel and activated its silver blade. "And I'd just as soon take a few Yuuzhan Vong with us."

"No." Numa reached over and shut down Alema's lightsaber. "I won't have that, not after New Plympto."

Frustrated by the planet's stubborn resistance, the Yuuzhan Vong had released a life-destroying plague that wiped the whole world clean. The sisters and a few thousand others had waited out the destruction inside a small fleet of intrasystem ore freighters, then sneaked into space after the enemy abandoned the dead world.

"They're Yuuzhan Vong, sister," Alema said. "Do you think they'll just forgive the captain's lie?"

"Hardly." Numa returned to the console. "We must make them think their creature is wrong."

She called up a hologram that showed the Yuuzhan Vong frigate floating half a kilometer beyond the Nebula Chaser's docking bay. At only two hundred meters, the enemy craft was a mere fraction of the starliner's size, but the weapon nodules bristling along its flank left no doubt about its destructive capabilities.

Alema saw at once what her sister was thinking. "We'll pick our escape pod on the way."

She returned her lightsaber to their travel satchel and tossed the bag to Numa, then grabbed a datapad from the captain's bunkside table and comlinked it to the offbridge vidconsole. The sisters left the captain's suite and scurried toward the opposite end of the officers' deck. At the lift tube, Alema consulted the datapad and found the voxyn splashing through a Damp Deck basin two levels below. Its yellow eyes were fixed on the ceiling, tracing their path.

"It knows we're moving," Alema said.

"But its sense of distance is poor." Numa was ever the optimist. "Where are we going?"

Alema called up a display of midship escape stations, then chose the one most directly opposite the Yuuzhan Vong frigate. "Engineering deck, Bulkhead Forty-two." She performed a sectional security scan and found a team of Yuuzhan Vong smashing a droid in gravitational control. "We'll have to trick a squad of scarheads."

"Alternate?"

Alema checked the other escape stations, then shook her head. "Nothing, unless we leave the Chaser's sensor shadow."

"Out of the question." Numa's lekku curled inward at the tips. "We'll have to go bare."

"Bare?" It was the term they had used on New Plympto for caching their weapons and disguising themselves as slaves. "You must be brightsick. I'm not leaving my lightsaber behind!"

"You would risk the lives of everyone aboard?" Numa pulled her lightsaber from their travel satchel and twisted the handle open, then plucked the Adegan focusing crystal from its mount and secured it over her navel with a few drops of fleshglue. Through her filmy shift, the golden jewel looked like a dancer's decoration. "Do you think such selfishness worthy of the memory of Daeshara'cor?"

Alema coiled her lekku, then let them slap against her back. Though not exactly their Master, Daeshara'cor had certainly been the sisters' deliverer. During one of the Jedi's rare visits to Ryloth, she had recognized the Rar sisters' innate Force talents and rescued them from one of the darkest ryll dens in Kala'uun, then arranged their transport to the Jedi training academy. Alema sighed and held out her hand.

"If we must."

Numa placed Alema's lightsaber in her palm. Alema removed the Adegan crystal and secured the silver jewel over her own navel. They tossed their Jedi robes and the remains of their weapons into a disintegration chute, then stepped into the lift, descended twenty levels to the engineering deck, and left their satchel on the floor halfway across the tube threshold. Though a far less obvious act of sabotage than smashing the actuation panel, it was just as effective. A collision override circuit would hold the tube static until the safety hazard was removed.

"Time to look flighty," Alema said.

She called up a banal emotidrama on the datapad, and the sisters started toward Bulkhead 42. As they advanced down the corridor, they peered into each room they passed and called loudly for someone named Travot. When they reached inducer control, a Yuuzhan Vong warrior stepped out to confront them. With only three long scars on each cheek and a single disfigured ear, he was clearly a warrior of low rank. The sisters pressed themselves against the corridor's far wall and, doing their best to look shocked and repulsed, started to ease past.

He blocked their way with a lowered amphistaff. "Where do you go?"

"To s-see Travot?" Numa made her voice sound frightened and tentative. "He works in the coil room."

"The coil room?" the Yuuzhan Vong echoed.

Alema shrugged and glanced back to her datapad, as though unable to resist the emotidrama. "His workstation."

A second Yuuzhan Vong with the crooked nose and scar-laced face of a minor officer stepped into the corridor. He scrutinized the sisters briefly and, seeing there was no place beneath their dancing shifts to hide a lightsaber or anything else, pointed back the way they had come.

"This ship is under seizure. Return to your berthings."

Numa and Alema put on looks of fear and confusion and remained where they were.

"Obey!" the subordinate said.

"We c-can't," Alema said.

"They sealed off the staff deck," Numa said. "And they closed our lounge."

"See?" Alema called up a schematic of the ship and shoved the datapad at the officer. "We don't have anyplace to go."

"Do not pollute me with your profane devices!" The officer knocked the instrument from Alema's hand and smashed it beneath his heel, then motioned to someone inside the room. "Bring the infidel machine shaper."

A third Yuuzhan Vong appeared in the doorway with a bruise-mottled human female. One eyelid had split open and covered the side of her face in coppery-smelling blood.

"You have one called Travot in your squad?"

Numa saw her sister catch the engineer's eye and give a barely perceptible nod, using the Force to plant the suggestion that the woman knew Travot. Taking full advantage of the Yuuzhan Vong's insensitivity to the Force, Alema reached out and felt the presence of more than a hundred beings in the immediate area, most of them frightened, a few angry or in pain. She did not feel the invaders, of course; the Yuuzhan Vong were as invisible to the Force as it was to them - but she did feel the voxyn's hungry presence descending toward them. It had found another lift tube.

After a moment of confusion, the engineer finally said, "There's a Travot in engineering, but he's not on my crew."

The officer considered the two sisters, no doubt trying to puzzle out the proper procedure for dealing with them. Alema decided to help him along by simply assuming the answer she wanted - a subtle means of enticement both she and her sister had put to good use in the ryll dens of Kala'uun.

"Engineering is just down there, isn't it? At Bulkhead Forty-two?"

"That's right," the engineer said. "Bulkhead Forty-two."

Alema stepped to her sister's side and eyed the amphistaff blocking their way. The subordinate looked to his officer, who scowled and waved him down the corridor.

"See to it and return."

Not waiting for the warrior to lead the way, the sisters slipped past his amphistaff and started down the corridor. The bulkheads appeared to be simple structural arches that spanned the passage every ten meters, but each one contained a thin durasteel door that would descend automatically at the first sign of a pressure drop. The doors could also be triggered by voice, but the crew had wisely refrained from using the code to seal off the Yuuzhan Vong search parties.

As they scurried down the corridor, Alema reached out with the Force again and felt the voxyn behind them, on the same level and coming fast. They were at Bulkhead 33, still ninety meters from the escape pod.

"I'm cold, sister." Alema rubbed her bare arms. "Do you feel that chill?"

"Quiet," their guard ordered. "Your complaints are an insult to the gods."

Alema's palm ached for her lightsaber.

The faint clatter of claws on metal echoed down the corridor behind them. She looked over her shoulder and saw a distant ripple of darkness bounding down the sterile tunnel.

"What's that?" she gasped, finding it difficult to pretend she did not know. "What's it doing?"

Numa glanced back, then let out a convincing shriek and raced down the corridor flailing her arms. Alema screamed and started after her, leaving their astonished guard to stomp after them yelling for them to stop. As they passed Bulkhead 38, he cried out in astonishment, then yelled something angry in his own language as the voxyn bowled him off his feet.

Alema did not even glance back. "Close Bulkhead Thirty-eight!" she yelled. "Authorization code: nebula rubantine!"

The bulkhead door clanged down behind her and sealed itself with a hiss - then tolled deeply as the voxyn slammed into it. Alema knew that closing the door would draw attention from the Yuuzhan Vong commander - but so would allowing the voxyn to catch them. She hoped that the thing had broken its neck, but there was no such luck. It was up and slamming itself into the durasteel almost instantly.

They passed Bulkhead 42. Numa turned toward the outer wall and slapped her palm against the escape bay door-pad.

"Attention: You have requested entrance to an escape pod launching bay." The computer spoke in the same cheery female voice it used to announce dinner seatings. "Are you sure you wish to proceed?"

"Yes!" Numa said.

"If you proceed, an alarm will sound in the security -"

"Override alarm, code: Pollux eight one six!" Alema called. "Confidential departure."

"Override accepted."

As the launching bay's iris hatch swirled open, a soft pop sounded from Bulkhead 38, and Alema knew the hermetic seal had been broken. Her first thought was that someone on the bridge was raising the door, but then she heard the muffled voice of the female engineer.

The door rose, and the voxyn came scurrying down the corridor, sensory bristles on end, white tail whipping back and forth. The creature's yellow eyes were fixed on the floor and it was licking the air with a long forked tongue, and Alema's hand ached more than ever for her lightsaber.

"Ready the escape pod," Numa ordered, pushing Alema into the launching bay's bluish light. "Now, sister."

Alema found herself looking into the nozzle of the escape pod's primitive rocket engine. It was barely a meter across, just large enough to start the hundred-person capsule toward the nearest habitable planet.

In the corridor, Numa called, "Close Bulkhead Forty-two! Authorization code: nebula rubantine!"

"The bulkhead emergency code is temporarily suspended," the computer returned in its sweet voice. "Please report valid emergencies to any engineering supervisor."

"Override!" Numa ordered. "And disarm safety sensors! Code: Pollux ..."

As Numa finished the authorization code, Alema slipped past the rocket nozzle to the side of the pod. A sickening crunch sounded out in the corridor, but she could no longer see what was happening outside the bay. She pressed her palm to the escape pod's activation pad. The hatch slid open, revealing a starkly lit interior crammed with ten cramped rows of acceleration chairs. There was no cockpit or viewport, only a droid pilot stationed at the craft's single control panel.

The droid pointed to the chair farthest from the door. "Welcome to Escape Pod Four-twenty-one. Please take your seat and wait for the other passengers. There is no need -"

"Prepare for a cold launch." Alema would have preferred the speed of a hot launch, but the flare of rockets would be noticed on the bridge - and however faint their fast-dwindling hopes of escaping unnoticed, she still had to try. "On my command. Authorization code: Pollux -"

"The override authorization code has already been given," the droid said, turning to its duties. "There is no need to repeat the override authorization code once the launching bay is entered."

A wet burping noise sounded from out in the corridor, then Numa screamed. Alema stepped out of the escape pod and saw her sister staggering into the launching bay, arms raised to cover her face. She missed the center of the hatch and stumbled over the rim, then fell with her feet across the threshold. Her face and chest were covered in sizzling brown mucus, and her lekku were thrashing against the durasteel floor.

Alema did not experience Numa's pain, as she had heard sometimes happened between Force-sensitive siblings, but she did receive a heightened impression of her sister's thoughts. Numa was afraid of being blind, but more than that, she was frightened they would be unveiled as Jedi and cause the deaths of yet more innocents. And she was angry - angry at her own carelessness in letting the creature surprise her.

"Sister!"

Alema sprang toward Numa and saw the voxyn pinned beneath Bulkhead 42, struggling to pull itself forward. Though its torso was pressed almost flat, she was astounded to see it moving at all. Bulkhead doors had safety sensors precisely because they closed with so much force; they had sensor overrides because it was sometimes necessary to crush anything beneath them to save the ship.

As Alema neared her sister, the creature swung its broad snout in her direction and sprayed a jet of brown saliva through the hatchway. Prepared by the attack on her sister, she opened herself to the Force and, with an almost unconscious wave of her fingertips, sent the stream washing back toward her attacker. The voxyn, fast as a blaster bolt, closed its eyes and turned away before the mucus struck.

Alema hardly cared. Numa's thoughts were growing disorganized and distant, her cries fading to groans. Alema grabbed her sister beneath the arms, smearing her own fingers in the burning mucus, and tried not to think about what the stuff was doing to Numa's face and eyes.

"Find your center, sister." She pulled Numa into the launching bay. "Let the Force flow into you."

Numa fell completely quiet, her mind alarmingly calm - and then the calmness vanished, leaving in its place only a lingering peace and a vague sense of emptiness. Alema cried out and started to look down, then felt the mucus burning into the bones of her fingers and knew she did not have the courage.

Alema carried her sister's body around to the escape pod hatch and glanced back toward the door, where the voxyn, still trapped beneath the bulkhead, continued to watch. One side of its head was covered in the residue of its acid mucus, the scales beneath pocked and smoking as they continued to dissolve. The heads of several amphistaffs appeared in the narrow gap next to the creature's head and began - hopelessly - to pry.

A part of Alema - the part not mourning her sister, the part that was still a Jedi Knight - realized her last faint hope of slipping away unnoticed had vanished. The Yuuzhan Vong would hear the whir of the closing hatch and feel the thump of the pod's separation. Still, she could do nothing but go on. Pollux's life was forfeit - even if she surrendered, she knew the Yuuzhan Vong better than to think the commander would forgive his lies - but it would take time to destroy a ship as large as the Nebula Chaser. Perhaps, if she launched quickly, the frigate would be forced to pursue the escape pod instead of attacking the starliner. It was her best hope - her only hope.

She looked back toward the hatchway. "Close launching bay -"

The voxyn's snout - all of the creature Alema could still see - turned toward her and opened half a meter. A deafening shriek filled her ears, then the fist of a powerful compression wave slammed her in the stomach. She suddenly felt dizzy and sick, and in the next second she was slumped against the escape pod, cradling her sister's dead body in her arms. She felt something warm trickling out of her ear and touched it with a fleshless finger; when she lowered her hand, the tip of the bone was red with blood.

Alema tried to rise, nearly retched, then dropped back to her haunches, head spinning and stomach churning. Still holding Numa in her lap, she kicked her way through the escape pod door.

"Launch!" Alema gasped. "Launch right now!"

The pod hatch closed, the lights dimmed - and that was all. The capsule remained eerily silent and still. Puzzled, Alema dragged herself past a row of acceleration chairs and looked forward. The droid pilot was facing her, vocabulator flashing rapidly as he endeavored to explain proper launching procedure. Alema could not hear a word.

"Override!" she yelled. "Authorization code -"

The escape pod shot forward, hurling Alema into a durasteel chair-mounting. She had already given the authorization code.

 

Jaina missed the launch. She was staring at the heads-up display, trying to bring the Shadow's comm array into perfect alignment with the Nebula Chaser's tight-beam antenna. With the starliner drifting dead only twenty million kilometers in front of an orange sun, the task would have been difficult under the best circumstances. With the presence of a Yuuzhan Vong frigate limiting them to air thrusters, it was nearly impossible.

After several minutes of trying, Jaina finally aligned the comm pip inside the targeting reticle and matched the Shadow's rotation to the Nebula Chaser's progress across the face of the orange sun.

"How's that?"

R2-D2 scrolled a message down the heads-up.

"No, I don't think I can," Jaina snapped. "If you're getting anything at all, put it on!"

Half a dozen fuzzy two-dimensional vids appeared inside the canopy, neatly arrayed in a row across the plexalloy. Half the displays showed Yuuzhan Vong warriors being Yuuzhan Vong warriors, smashing droids, throwing electronics down disintegration tubes, beating helpless refugees. One screen showed some sort of eight-legged reptile - maybe it was a reptile - pinned beneath a bulkhead door, its head badly acid-burned and one eye burst from sudden decompression. Another display showed an empty escape pod bay, but it was the last screen that caught Jaina's interest.

It showed the Nebula Chaser's bridge, where Captain Pollux and his entire flight crew stood surrounded by Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Even had Jaina known Pollux personally and the vid display been better than it was, she would not have recognized him. His face had been reduced to a misshapen lump.

A Yuuzhan Vong with no nose cut the captain's ear off his head. "I ask the last time: Where did you pick up the Jeedai?"

Somehow, Pollux found the strength to laugh. "What Jedi?"

The Yuuzhan Vong chuckled. "You are a funny man, Captain." He folded the dismembered ear into the captain's palm, then turned to his subordinates. "Kill the crew."

Heart sinking, Jaina turned to Mara. "Can we do anything?"

Mara kept her attention fixed on her navicomputer. "Not for the crew. But look at this."

She keyed a command, and a golden trajectory line appeared inside the canopy. It ran from the Nebula Chaser more or less across the Shadow's bow, then curved sharply toward the planet.

"An escape pod?" Jaina glanced back to the starliner and found the Yuuzhan Vong frigate still sitting idle off the Chaser's docking bay deck. "They endangered thousands of refugees, then snuck away in an escape pod? Jedi did that?"

"That's how it looks, doesn't it?" Mara began to plot an interception course. "Let's pick 'em up before they do any more damage."

 

Chapter 2

A mere kilometer beyond the transparisteel wall, the antenna-strewn horizon plunged away into a bottomless abyss of tumbling asteroids and drifting stars. Tiny blue halos winked into existence and slowly swelled into the backlit rectangles of enormous cargo barges returning with loads of durasteel from outlying fabrication plants. Crew transports laced the darkness with long tails of ions, racing from task to task on more than a hundred orbiting dry docks, and enormous welding droids traced ship skeletons in brilliant spark storms.

On the way in, Han Solo had counted nearly five hundred warships under construction in the old Bilbringi Shipyards. They were mostly escorts, corvettes, and other small stuff that could be finished in a hurry, but there were also two Imperial-class Star Destroyers. While these huge ships probably would not be ready before the Yuuzhan Vong captured the facility, the hulls were nearly closed and the drive units already mounted. Clearly, young General Muun was a Sullustan with a plan, just the sort of careful deskpilot who always impressed Coruscant Command - and seldom failed to exhaust Han's limited supply of patience.

Wishing he could use one of those Jedi calming techniques his son Jacen was always talking about, Han forced an insincere smile and turned toward the center of the room. Leia sat on a small couch with the general, her face glowing with the same stunning brown-eyed intensity that had caught Han's eye so long ago. Though he would never understand how she had kept that fervor burning so brightly through thirty years of service to the galaxy, it had become a mooring for him, the one constant that never seemed to change through so many decades of struggle, loss, and death. Now, when occasionally her legs - healed from her near-fatal ordeal on Duro but still sometimes weak - tired and stumbled, the pain of almost losing her made his heart stop, and he swore he would never, ever shut her out again.

"... hundred thousand lives are at stake, General," she was saying. "The Vray are a gentle species. Without an escort, the evacuation convoy will be defenseless against the Yuuzhan Vong."

"And how many lives will the New Republic lose if Bilbringi falls before the fleet is completed?" Muun asked. His heavy Sullustan jowls rippled gently as he spoke, but his feelings remained otherwise hidden behind his flat mask of a face. "Whole worlds will perish, and that will mean millions."

"She's only asking for twenty ships," Han said.

The general turned his black eyes on Han. "She is asking for five cruisers and fifteen corvettes - a quarter of Bilbringi's defense, and the Yuuzhan Vong are already probing our outer security posts."

"We're letting you keep the Dauntless." Han spoke in his most reasonable tone. "And the other ships will be back in a week standard ... two, tops."

"I am sorry, no." Muun shook his head and started to rise.

A buzz sounded from the secure comm station on the general's desk. C-3PO, who had been standing behind the couch, raised his head and inquired, "Would you like me to take that for you, General?"

Muun nodded. "Unless it's urgent priority, I'll reply in a few minutes."

"Thanks, Threepio," Han said. Any interruption would only reduce their chances of getting the escort. He dropped into a seat opposite Muun. "You seem to be forgetting who you're talking to, General."

Leia's brown eyes flashed in alarm. "Han -"

"It wasn't so long ago she could have demanded the ships," Han continued. "If anyone deserves -"

"I know what the Princess deserves." Muun reluctantly returned to his seat. "I studied the history vids at the academy."

"History vids?" Han growled. "So they activated you when? About last year?" He glanced through the transparisteel dome at the bustling dry docks. "You must have had some test scores to get a command like this."

An indignant shudder ran through the Sullustan's jowls, but before he could reply, C-3PO spoke again.

"Excuse me for interrupting, but there is a Yuuzhan Vong emissary asking to see Princess Leia."

"What?" Han and Leia asked together.

"Tell him no," Han said.

And Leia asked, "How did he find me?"

C-3PO spouted a millisecond of digital squeal into the comm station. The reply came a moment later.

"The Yuuzhan Vong emissary refuses to reveal that information to the picket officer, but he does swear in the name of Yun-Yammka to do you no harm. He wishes to discuss the fate of some refugees."

"No," Han said.

Leia flashed him a scowl, then said to C-3PO, "Tell him I'll send instructions shortly."

"Have you gone spacesick?" Han knew he would never win this argument, but he had to try. Having already lost his best friend to the Yuuzhan Vong, he was determined not to lose his wife. "Or maybe you've forgotten Elan and the bo'tous attempt - or how close you came to losing your legs last year on Duro?"

"I haven't forgotten," Leia said evenly. She turned to their host. "But I'm sure General Muun wants to hear how the Yuuzhan Vong knew I was here - almost as much as I do."

The Sullustan nodded. "Indeed."

"You can't let a Yuuzhan Vong into Bilbringi!" Han said, realizing that Muun was his best hope of preventing Leia from taking such a risk. "The ship counts alone -"

"Will be of use to our enemies only if they are accurate." The Sullustan did not even look in Han's direction. His jowls lifted into a sort of stiff grin, and he said to Leia, "We have been waiting for just such an opportunity."

"Then it is my pleasure to give it to you." Leia turned to C-3PO. "You may relay to the Yuuzhan Vong that we will grant him safe passage."

"As long as he presents himself unarmed and unmasked," Han added glumly. Leia's Noghri bodyguards, waiting in the corridor outside Muun's office, would like this even less than he did, but they stood no chance at all of changing her mind. "And if there's any funny business -"

"He has already promised honorable conduct," C-3PO replied. "Though, if you ask me, a Yuuzhan Vong's promise is worth precisely as much as a Jawa's."

General Muun stepped over to his desk and opened a comm channel to his security chief. "Commence Operation Restbreak. This is not a drill."

Han and the two bodyguards spent the next two hours converting one of the base's old Imperial interrogation chambers into an interview room he considered safe enough for his wife. The main safety feature was the transparisteel panel through which the discussion would be held, but there were also the biosensor arrays to monitor the Yuuzhan Vong's body state, the negative air pressure to confine any poisons he might release to the original room, and a "void button" that would open the chamber to the near-vacuum outside.

General Muun's preparations were just as thorough and twice as fast. He had barely given the order before the orbiting dry docks began to fall dark and still, making the shipyard look more and more abandoned. By the time the picket ship appeared above the planetoid, only three dilapidated dry docks remained in operation, skeleton crews scurrying about their work as though rushing to put the final touches on half a dozen inconsequential corvettes. The vast majority of the dry docks were not even visible, and the few that could be seen contained only half-built craft that appeared to have been abandoned in the haste of an over-early evacuation. Whether or not the general deserved his command at such a young age, Han had to admire his cleverness; based on what could be seen from the surface, the Yuuzhan Vong would be in no hurry to attack the Bilbringi Shipyards.

C-3PO announced the emissary's arrival, then a dozen guards entered the interrogation chamber with their charge. The Yuuzhan Vong had been afforded few diplomatic courtesies; something that looked like an artificial eye had been confiscated and now rested in a security officer's hand, and in place of his own clothes, he wore a thin fleet watchcloak with the hood up. In his hands he carried a spongelike creature that resembled the villips Yuuzhan Vong used to communicate over long distances, though this one was larger and more gelatinous. The shipyard science officers had screened the creature for every known form of Yuuzhan Vong attack and confirmed it to be an organic communication device, but Leia's Noghri bodyguards, Adarakh and Meewalh, insisted on performing their own inspection, sniffing, prodding, and squeezing the thing until Han thought it would burst. He put his hand over the void button anyway; until someone could tell him how an overgrown protozoan could send messages across the galaxy as efficiently as the HoloNet, he wasn't taking anyone's word for anything.

Once everyone was satisfied, the escorts pushed the emissary into the room's single chair, then left and locked the door.

Leia stepped to the transparisteel. "I am Leia Organa Solo."

"Yes, we have met before, on the planet Rhommamool." The emissary's voice was throaty and arrogant, and it instantly caused Leia's face to go white. He set his creature on the table and peeled back his hood, revealing a smashed Yuuzhan Vong face with one empty eye socket. "And at Duro, we even worked together for a time."

"Cree'Ar?" Leia's hand dropped instinctively to her lightsaber - the one Luke had made for her years ago. Tsavong Lah had destroyed her other lightsaber on Duro. "Nom Anor!"

"You have an excellent memory." The Yuuzhan Vong glared at Leia coldly. "How is your son Jacen? And Mara, is she still in remission? As you know, I have a special interest in your sister-in-law's condition."

Han felt the void button tickle his palm and realized he was dangerously close to pressing it. "Keep talking, fella." During the fall of Duro, Nom Anor had attempted to kill Mara and Jaina, tried to orchestrate the deaths of Leia and Jacen, and before that he had infected Mara with a deadly disease that had required more than two years to overcome. "There's nothing I'd enjoy more than vaccing you."

Nom Anor's smile remained snide. "Before you hear what I came to say? Besides, I do not think Leia Organa Solo the type to break a promise of safe passage."

"My promise, not Han's," Leia said. "And his self-control isn't what it used to be. How did you know I was here?"

"With the Vray evacuating, where else would you look for a convoy escort?" Nom Anor gestured at the creature on the desk. "If I may?"

"The Vray have been evacuating for weeks," Leia said, continuing to press for an answer. Han doubted Nom Anor would tell them if there was a spy inside Bilbringi, but what was left unsaid would prove just as useful to General Muun. "We've only been here a few hours."

"We are, of course, watching Bilbringi - and that is really all I am going to say on the matter." Without asking permission this time, Nom Anor coaxed his creature awake with a brief stroke. "Tsavong Lah wishes you to see this."

The creature melted into a flat disk, then began to glow with yellow bioluminescence. The light coalesced into a long starship with a blocky stern and the distinctive hammerhead bridge of one of the Corellian Engineering Corporation's large civilian cruisers. Judging by the lack of efflux from the ion drives and the open doors of its docking bay deck, the ship was standing dead in space.

"The starliner Nebula Chaser," Nom Anor said. "The image is current."

Han's heart leapt into his throat. The Nebula Chaser was the ship Mara and Jaina had gone to meet. The mission was supposed to be simple, a quick rendezvous in a safe sector and then home - but something had clearly gone wrong. He put on his best sabacc face and forced himself not to look in his wife's direction.

"Very impressive," Leia said. Though she had to be just as worried as Han, her voice remained dry and mocking. "You've learned to transmit holograms. I'll look forward to your holodramas on the 'Net."

"The Yuuzhan Vong have made living light for centuries," Nom Anor snapped. "I am showing you this ship because the warmaster thought you might wish to trade."

Here it comes, Han thought. He moved his hand away from the void button, not trusting himself to resist if Nom Anor announced the Yuuzhan Vong had his daughter.

"Tsavong Lah thought wrong," Leia said. Her voice was a little too cold, the only hint of the ice ball that had to be filling in her stomach. "I'd rather trade with a Hutt."

"The Hutts do not have what you want." Nom Anor stabbed a clawlike finger into the hologram. "There are ten thousand refugees aboard, and their peril is your doing."

"I doubt that. If this is what Tsavong Lah wished me to see, our business is done."

Leia turned her back on Nom Anor and stepped away from the transparisteel. It was all Han could do not to remind her that their daughter's life might be at stake, but he held his tongue, knowing she was only trying to undermine their opponent's confidence.

She made it as far as the door before Nom Anor called, "You can save them." He rose to peer over the living light. "Just tell me where to find the Jedi base."

Leia glanced at Han, clearly wondering whether Nom Anor meant they could save the refugees or Jaina and Mara, then said, "There is no Jedi base."

Nom Anor sighed theatrically. "Princess Leia, you discredit me again in the eyes of Tsavong Lah." He let his chin slump. "I advised him you would never sacrifice so many to save so few, but he believes you are willing to sacrifice more - much more - to protect the Jedi."

As Nom Anor spoke, a salvo of plasma balls streaked into the hologram and erupted against the shieldless starliner, opening flash-melted holes in the durasteel hull. Dark clouds of speck-sized flotsam and atmospheric vapor began to jet into space, and another salvo of plasma boiled into view. Many of the balls entered through the same holes as the previous fusillade and tore through the ship's interior bulkheads. The clouds darkened as more flotsam poured into the cold vacuum, then the image shifted, magnifying the breach area and revealing the specks to be the tumbling, pressure-ruptured bodies of the ship's passengers.

"Truly, the wisdom of Tsavong Lah is as boundless as the galaxy itself." Nom Anor rolled his one good eye as though sharing a joke, then gestured at the starliner. "They are dying because there were Jedi aboard. If the Jedi do not want more to die, they will surrender within one of your standard weeks."

"More?" Han knew it was exactly the question Nom Anor wanted him to ask, but he could not restrain himself. He had to know what had become of Jaina. "How many more?"

"Your scouts will confirm that our fleets have surrounded the world of Talfaglio; for the next week, all refugee ships are being held in orbit. If the Jedi surrender, the convoy will be allowed to leave. If the Jedi do not, it will be destroyed." Nom Anor glanced down at Han's hand, which was hovering over the void button, then added, "As they will if I fail to return."

"You expect the Jedi to surrender?" Han asked. He was too relieved by Nom Anor's failure to mention Jaina or Mara to feel any real outrage at the deaths of ten thousand strangers. Maybe he should have felt guilty about that, he didn't know, but all that mattered at the moment was that Jaina and Mara were safe. "Won't happen, fella. I might as well get things started."

Han locked gazes with Nom Anor and lowered his hand toward the void button, grinning crookedly and taking his time to give Leia a chance to stop him. The Yuuzhan Vong met his gaze with a sneer and did not look away, even when Han's palm touched the button. He paused there, waiting for Leia to stop him, but she said nothing. Han glanced over and saw her glaring at the emissary, her brown eyes burning with raw rage.

"What are you waiting for?" she demanded.

"Really?"

Leia nodded. "Do it."

The edge in her voice unsettled Han, and it occurred to him that Nom Anor might have failed to mention Jaina or Mara for another reason - a reason Leia had already thought of. It was entirely possible the pair had been aboard when the Nebula Chaser was destroyed, and the Yuuzhan Vong simply did not realize who they had killed.

Han pushed the void button, and a seal hissed open along the edge of the ceiling panel. Nom Anor's one eye grew wide.

"Are you mad?" He jumped to his feet. "You'll kill millions!"

Leia reached over and depressed the void button again, stopping the ceiling panel where it was. "Not us, you."

The air continued to hiss out of the chamber, causing the image of the Nebula Chaser to nicker out of existence as the villip creature curled in on itself. Nom Anor glanced at the ceiling, then back to Leia, his gruesome face slack with surprise. She waited until he pressed his fingers to his ears, then hit the void button again and closed the panel.

When Nom Anor took his hands away from his ears, Leia said, "Go back to your warmaster and tell him how you were treated. Tell him the Jedi accept no responsibility for the lives he threatens, and that any emissary issuing a similar threat will not be returned."

Nom Anor nodded, if not meekly, then at least not haughtily. "I will tell him, but that will change nothing." He went to the door and waited until it opened, then added, "The warmaster believes this will work, and he has not been wrong yet."

 

Luke Skywalker knew that a few days in the bacta tank would heal the physical damage, but there was an anguish in Alema that would never fade. He could feel it even now, while she floated in a restless healing trance, and the torment would only grow worse when she awakened to the news of the Nebula Chaser's fate. There would be more feelings of guilt, more anger, more fear of the ... thing that had killed her sister. Already perilously close to the dark side in her leadership of the New Plympto resistance, now she would find it an irresistible alternative to accepting whatever responsibility she bore for her sister's death, for New Plympto's destruction, and for the starliner's fate. It was not a question of whether Alema Rar would turn to the dark side, but how soon and for how long.

The infirmary door whispered open behind Luke, and he turned to find Cilghal's liquid eyes studying him from the threshold.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Luke, but your brother-in-law is demanding to speak with you. He seems to think we're keeping something from him."

Luke smiled. "Good old Han. It's nice to have him back to normal."

Cilghal's huge mouth parted in a Calamarian grin. "Yes, isn't it?"

Luke followed her into a round corridor and started toward the conference vault. Like much of the new base, the tunnel had been laser-cut from solid rock, but it had been sealed against vacuum leaks with a white plastifoam that made it appear much softer and brighter than the typical cave warren. The foam was also an excellent insulator, trapping equipment-generated heat so efficiently that most species elected to wear their vacuum emergency suits - still necessary far too often - with all closures open. Engineering was trying to correct the problem, but most inhabitants already referred to their sleeping quarters as sweat lodges.

Luke entered the conference vault and found his nephews, Jacen and Anakin, waiting with Danni Quee, Tahiri Veila, and a group of other Jedi. A small hologram of Han and Leia hovered above the holoprojector in the center of the conference table. Han was grilling his sons about exactly why their sister was not in the room; Leia was looking a little embarrassed.

Luke joined the others at the table and, much to the gratitude of his two nephews, took their place in the hole's sensor arc. "Han, Jaina is in the signals center with Artoo, trying to enhance a transmission they received from the Nebula Chaser. She'll be here as soon as she can, but she can't drop what she's doing."

Han frowned, but appeared to accept this. "You heard about the threat?"

Luke nodded. "A few minutes ago."

"Then what took you so long?"

"I was with Alema Rar," he said. "She wasn't strapped in when the pod ejected and got beat up. She couldn't say much on the way back except 'voxyn,' so I was hoping to get a subconscious impression of what happened to her sister."

Han narrowed his eyes. "Subconscious impression?"

"Through the Force, Han," Luke said, beginning to lose patience with his brother-in-law. Though Han was largely back to himself, his grief over Chewbacca's death continued to manifest itself in peculiar ways. The latest was a nervous streak that had both Leia and his children ready to walk asteroids. "Jaina is fine - so is Mara."

The attempt at subtlety was lost on Han. "So how come Mara isn't there?"

"Mara can't exactly drop what she's doing either," Luke answered. "She's feeding Ben."

"You'll have to excuse us for being a little nervous." Leia flashed an annoyed look at her husband, then continued, "That was quite a demonstration Nom Anor put on. Ten thousand people dead, and I doubt he would have stopped if I had told him where to find Eclipse. What are we going to do about Talfaglio?"

"First, remember that by allowing the Yuuzhan Vong to make the responsibility ours, we would only be playing into their hands," Luke said. "We must always remember that they're the murderers here, not us."

"That is true as far as it goes, Master Skywalker," Cilghal said, addressing Luke more formally now that they were in a larger group. "But I am not comfortable closing my eyes to the death of so many. Whether the responsibility is ours or not, we must do something if we can prevent it."

"And we're not entirely innocent in this, either." Jaina entered the vault leading R2-D2 and several Jedi. News of Tsavong Lah's threat was spreading fast, and base personnel were pouring into the conference vault. "There were Jedi on the Nebula Chaser, and those Jedi were leading the resistance on New Plympto. The Rar sisters put the whole starliner at risk by boarding it - as we did by rendezvousing with it."

"And you know the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't have taken them for sacrifices how?" Danni Quee asked, always quick to pinpoint the flaw in any argument. A small-framed woman with green eyes and curly blond hair, Danni had been one of the first Yuuzhan Vong prisoners - and the first to witness their breaking tortures. "We can't presume to know how these killers think," she went on. "It will cause mistakes. Bad ones."

As Danni spoke, she stepped aside to let Jaina join Luke in the holocomm's sensor arc.

"Hi, Dad, Mom," Jaina said. "Sorry to keep you waiting."

"We weren't waiting that long," Leia said.

The tension drained from Han's face, and he added, "Yeah, no problem."

The calm lasted about a second before Anakin Solo, his brown hair as unruly as ever, stepped forward to kick the discussion into hyperdrive. "Look, it doesn't really matter whether we're responsible or not. There are hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of lives at risk. We've got to do something, that's all."

"What would you have us do, Anakin?" Luke asked.

Tahiri answered for him. "Break their blockade, of course." Blond and willowy, Tahiri resembled in many respects a fifteen-year-old version of Danni Quee - even down to having been a Yuuzhan Vong prisoner, until Anakin rescued her from a shaper laboratory. "We make them pay, so they don't try it again. It's the only way we turn this back on them."

"And that may be exactly what the Yuuzhan Vong expect us to do," Danni said. "If they see the Jedi as warriors like themselves, they will expect an honorable response."

Han nodded in the hologram. "They're calling the Jedi out. You'd be fools to go - especially when they're waiting for you."

"So we let a world die?" Jacen's quiet voice was a stark contrast to the rising tension in the room. He turned toward Tahiri and Anakin. "But waving our lightsabers around will only get more people killed, too."

Anakin scowled, as he so often did when talking with his older brother these days. "Maybe you can just stand aside and watch -"

Jacen raised a hand. "Let me finish, Anakin. I'm saying that neither choice is good." He glanced at the others in the room. "If we fight, the Yuuzhan Vong kill more people; if we don't fight, they kill them anyway. We can't permit either. The Jedi are supposed to be the defenders of life in this galaxy."

"What are you saying, Jacen?" Han demanded. "That the Jedi have to surrender?" He closed his eyes and winced. "Tell me that's not what you're saying."

"Nobody is going to surrender, Han," Luke said.

He was sympathetic to Han's concern. Of all the young Jedi Knights who had come to Eclipse, Jacen was the most philosophical, often struggling with the paradoxical idea that it was sometimes necessary to destroy in order to preserve. Luke knew his nephew's concerns to be the result of a disturbing vision on the planet Duro, in which Jacen had seen the galaxy tipping toward darkness and been unable to stop it. Fearful of tipping the balance even farther, the young Jedi had temporarily abandoned the Force altogether. Though he had resumed its use when events necessitated it in order to save his mother's life, Jacen remained uncertain enough about his vision that at times his uneasiness still moved him close to inaction - a situation as perilous, in its own way, as the one that would soon be leading Alema into danger.

"We're not surrendering," Luke repeated. "And we won't let the Yuuzhan Vong lure us into battle unprepared." He turned to Danni and Cilghal. "Does the Eclipse Program have anything to offer yet?"

Danni shook her head. "Nothing. We can tell from the holos when there's a yammosk coordinating the battle, but it's been impossible to identify posting patterns or determine how it communicates. We just have to get closer."

Luke looked to Cilghal. "And the villips?"

"I fear my group has made even less progress," she said. "The Yuuzhan Vong obviously stop using the villips we have captured, which leaves us only with dissection. So far, we haven't the faintest idea how they work."

Luke nodded to both scientists. "It's too early to expect progress, but it will come." He turned to the others - now numbering nearly fifty, including Mara, their infant son, Ben, and more than a dozen non-Jedi support volunteers. "Our path is not yet clear, but I am confident in this much: It would be folly to let the Yuuzhan Vong draw us out before we are ready. I hope you can be patient and trust in the Force to steer blame for the Nebula Chaser's destruction onto the proper shoulders."

As the group murmured its consent and began to break up, Mara came to his side. "Well said, Luke." Cradling Ben in one arm, she rose to her toes and kissed him on the cheek. "But I'd feel better if the Force weren't blind to Yuuzhan Vong shoulders."

 

Chapter 3

One of a thousand pagan blasphemies excluded from the redemption of Obroa-skai, the Museum of Applied Photonics rose above the surrounding bugyards in a glittering massif of transparisteel towers and crystalplas galleries. Though Nom Anor had spent too much time among the infidels to find the sight offensive, he knew better than to let his comfort with the place show. He paused at the threshold to cast a yearning glance out over the droning black plain, then put on a sneer of disgust and followed his escorts into the lobby, where a hundred Verpine captives stood watching their Yuuzhan Vong guards with unfathomable insectoid eyes. After a brief conversation with the subaltern of the detachment, Nom Anor's escorts led him through a maze of corridors profanely lit by wandering balls of pure light.

They found Tsavong Lah in a chamber surrounded by what looked like a hundred kilometers of snarled translucent threads. A fully tattooed warrior with fringed lips and bone-implanted armor, the warmaster was holding a small holopad in his hand, gazing at its projector disk with a look most others would reserve for cowards and slaves.

"Now," he said into the instrument.

Tsavong Lah had barely spoken before an instantaneous flash lit the whole thread tangle, then leapt through the empty air into the holopad. A millisecond later, the full-sized image of an infidel X-wing appeared over his hand, obscuring the warmaster's upper body and much of the room. The starfighter turned slowly toward the door and opened fire; only Nom Anor did not duck for cover.

"Do you know what I would do with this, were I the infidels?" Tsavong Lah asked, speaking from inside the hologram.

"Destroy it, I am certain," Nom Anor answered. "Such lifeless things are an abomination to the gods. I cannot tell you how it disgusted me to abide them while I prepared the way for our invasion."

"We all do what is necessary, Executor, and you have already been commended for enduring the enemy's filth." Tsavong Lah's tone was irritated, and perhaps a little distracted. "We cannot defeat what we do not understand. For instance, our coralskipper pilots could easily be misled by an image such as this. Were I the enemy, the galaxy would be littered with these devices."

"The galaxy is littered with them," Nom Anor answered, bristling. "They are not really much to admire, Great One. They are as limited in their capacities as are our enemies."

The X-wing vanished, then Tsavong Lah dropped the holopad to the floor and crushed it beneath the armored vua'sa claw that he now stood upon in place of the foot taken by Jacen Solo.

"The enemy has proven challenging enough to thwart you several times." The warmaster's voice was full of loathing; a true believer in the supremacy of the Yuuzhan Vong gods, he disavowed the influence of chance and viewed any failure as a sign of the instrument's spiritual decadence. "I trust that was not the case this time?"

"The chilab worked beautifully." Nom Anor tipped his head to one side, then covered his nostrils and blew air into his sinuses. Though he lacked the faith to truly enjoy the pain of the neural grub's detachment, he feigned a smile of satisfaction as the thing tore its dendrites from his optic chiasma and exited through his nasal cavity. He let it drop into his palm, then presented it to Tsavong Lah. "I had a good view on the way in. I am certain the chilab's memories will prove useful in planning your attack."

"No doubt." Tsavong Lah slipped the grub into the pocket of the sharp-clawed cape clinging to his shoulders. "I will view them later. Your meeting with Leia Solo went well?"

"Very well." It would have been unthinkable to answer anything else. "I have no doubt that the Jedi will respond to our challenge."

"You are more confident than I would be in your place," a wispy voice said, low and behind him. "The Jedi will smell our trap and be wary."

Nom Anor turned and saw a motley featherball hopping past the guards on thin, reverse-jointed legs. Her willowy ears and corkscrew antennae bestowed on her a vaguely mothlike aspect, though Nom Anor considered her a pest more on the magnitude of a radank.

"Vergere," he fumed. "I was not aware you knew the ways of the Jedi."

"Vergere knows them better than I," Tsavong Lah said. "She was the one who said the Jeedai would let you live. I believed they would kill you outright."

"You were perhaps closer to the truth than your pet." Nom Anor refused to call Vergere an aide, for the peculiar little creature was no more than the familiar of an agent who had perished during an ill-fated attempt to disease the Jedi. She had become an adviser to Tsavong Lah after a brief captivity in the hands of New Republic Intelligence, where she managed to learn as much about the enemy in a few weeks as had Nom Anor in all his years as an agent provocateur. Questions had been raised about her loyalties, but once the reliability of her information had been established, she had quickly become Nom Anor's greatest rival.

"Leia Solo and her consort did attempt to kill me as you expected," Nom Anor continued, "but I was able to play on her human emotions to save my life."

"So now you can control the emotions of the Jedi?" Vergere mocked. "Then perhaps you should make them surrender."

"One can lure a tana into the spatter pit with a smile and soft words." Nom Anor spread his hands and turned to Tsavong Lah. "Even I cannot persuade it to lay its neck in the cleaving yoke."

The warmaster rewarded him with a curt nod. "I am more interested in what Leia Solo said than why you are still alive. How did she respond when the Gift of Anguish destroyed the infidels?"

"She wanted to kill me."

"But she did not," the warmaster observed. "What did she do instead?"

"I convinced her she would also be killing millions of refugees." Even Nom Anor realized he was clinging to the claim a little too closely - perhaps because of the shame he had already suffered at Leia's hands on Duro. "She yielded."

"Not yielded - she refused to accept blame." Vergere stated her rebuttal as fact, not supposition. She hopped over to Tsavong Lah. "She's been a diplomat all her life. For her to fall into such a trap would be akin to you flying into an ambush."

Tsavong Lah considered her argument for only an instant. "It may appear so, but something else is happening." He looked over Vergere's feathery back at Nom Anor. "She let you live for a reason. What is it?"

The answer, of course, was because she had given her word, but Nom Anor knew better than to say so. Such an answer would contradict the opinion the warmaster had expressed earlier, and while a Yuuzhan Vong subordinate could insinuate, thwart, even subvert and still hope to live, he could never contradict. Sometimes Nom Anor wondered if the infidels' way was not better, and he supposed the fact that he did not immediately cower in fear of the gods' retribution was in itself a sign that he had spent too long away from his people. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why he had been forced to endure the painful introduction of the chilab if the warmaster had not expected him to return, Nom Anor shrugged.

"Before she released me, she gave me a warning. She said to tell you that the Jedi accept no responsibility for the hostages, and that any emissary you send with a similar threat will not be returned."

If Tsavong Lah noticed the slight contradiction of Nom Anor's contention that he had been the one controlling Leia, he showed no sign. He simply looked to Vergere.

"Right again, my servant."

She smiled up at him. "Have I not said the Jedi will prove worthy foes?"

"You have indeed," the warmaster said. "But the refugees will be their undoing yet. They will become the wedge that drives the New Republic away from the Jeedai"

 

Chapter 4

The one good thing to come of Tsavong Lah's threat was that General Muun decided now would be a bad time to appear indifferent to the fate of refugees - and a particularly good time to boost his career by "rescuing" a group of evacuees. Not only did he send ten vessels to escort the Vray to safety, he insisted on leading the operation himself - freeing Leia and Han to return directly to Eclipse.

One of the many bad things to come of the threat was that when they arrived, Luke was waiting with a mission and a request to borrow C-3PO. The Solos barely had a chance to say hello to Anakin and the twins before they were on their way again, this time to Nova Station in what had once been the Carida system.

Surrounded as it was by the still-cooling ejecta of the explosion that had turned its sun into a supernova, space outside Nova Station was the reddest space Leia had ever seen. Wispy curtains of crimson gas swept slowly past the turning station, obscuring the distant stars and calling to mind the flash-boiled blood of billions of perished Caridans. Sitting there with Han in the wryly named Big Boom cantina, sipping an eyeblaster and trying to ignore Bobolo Baker's All-Bith Band, Leia could not help feeling a little sickened by the knowledge that this had been an artificial cataclysm, one wrought by her own species' boundless thirst for vengeance and destruction.

An electronic attention bell chimed three times, temporarily drowning out Bobolo's nighty melody, then a male voice said something garbled over the public-address system. Along with every other being in the cantina, Leia and Han turned their heads toward a hologram projector hanging over the All-Bith Band. The name Asteroid Dancer appeared, with a line beneath designating the vessel a YT-1500 freighter. A few moments later, the word Confirmed was added, and a hologram depicting the craft's distinctive cockpit arrangement appeared.

Han grunted in frustration and reached for the pitcher of eyeblasters sitting in front of him. "They should've been here by now." He filled his glass, took a sip, then tried not to make a sour face and returned the drink to the table. "Booster's not coming."

"He has to," Leia said, glad to see the distaste in Han's expression. For a long time after Chewbacca's death he would drink anything, the fouler the better. The healing of his taste buds was yet one more sign of the healing inside. "Even the Errant Venture needs to resupply. Could we have missed them?"

Han gave her one of his patented dumb-question looks, then waved at the holo display. "How do we miss a Star Destroyer?"

"We don't," Leia agreed. "Not here."

Built to replace Carida as a way stop on the Perlemian Trade Route, Nova Station floated just inside the supernova's expanding gas shell, moving along behind the edge at the same three kilometers per second. As a result, any starship wishing to dock with the station had to leave hyperspace and enter the cloud at sublight speed, then use its sensors to obtain a final location. This gave station security and anyone else with a decent sensor package a chance to identify the ship long before it arrived, making the station an ideal haunt for smugglers, criminals, and anyone else with reason to appreciate a head start.

Han looked across the table. "What do you think, Red?" He was referring to Leia's neon-colored hair - now almost down to her collar after being shaved off during a decon alert on Duro last year. Along with a blastback pilot's jacket and stretchtight flight suit she could still pull off, the temporary dye job was part of her smuggler's-moll disguise. "Time to go?"

Leia smiled and shook her head. "How about something to eat?"

She reached over to thumb the service pad, but stopped when she noticed Han being eyed from the next table. The watcher was a small mountain of a Weequay, with a broad nose and a deeply creased face almost as gruesome as a Yuuzhan Vong's. "I think you're about to be recognized."

"Me?" Han turned to gaze out the viewport and see if he could spy the watcher in its reflection. "It's not my face that's been flashing over the 'Net for the last twenty years."

Long resentful of the loss of anonymity that came with being a hero of the Rebellion, Han had limited his disguise to a brush-bottle mustache and a pair of cheek pads. Along with a two-day growth of beard, the costume had worked so far, probably because people did not expect to see the husband of a former chief of state in a place like the Big Boom.

Clearly, their luck was changing. The big Weequay picked up his drink and stood, flight duster flapping open to reveal the hilt of a big vibroblade on his hip. Knowing that her Noghri bodyguard would be growing nervous, Leia glanced quickly in Meewalh's direction. Gaunt, wiry, and no more than a meter and a half tall, Meewalh was nevertheless such an intimidating sight with her leathery skin and wild eyes that even the Big Boom's clientele gave her wide berth. Leia signaled the Noghri to wait with a double eyeflick, then pretended not to notice as the stranger started toward Han.

"Wait a minute," Han said, more to himself than Leia. "I know this guy."

Leia casually lowered a hand beneath the table and loosened the blaster on her hip. The mere fact that her husband knew someone was no guarantee that the party in question did not have murder in mind. The big Weequay stopped beside their table and, after casting an appraising glance at Leia, turned to Han.

"Thought it was you," he said. "I'd recognize that smell anywhere."

"Yeah?" Han narrowed his eyes at the Weequay, clearly trying to recall where he had seen him before. "I get that a lot."

"Didn't see your ship come in on the board, Miek." The Weequay's smile was almost a sneer; clearly, he enjoyed watching Han struggle to remember him. "You still with the Sunlight?"

"You might say that." Han flashed a conspiratorial smile, then took a long drink of his eyeblaster to buy himself some time. Sunlight Franchise was one of a dozen false transponder codes the Falcon used regularly. They had docked with Nova Station under the name Longshot, and Han had more aliases than even he could track. Finally, he returned the glass to the table and refilled it from the pitcher. "Only you'd have to try a different name."

The Weequay laughed. "I thought as much. That captain of yours was a tricky one." He pulled up a chair and sat down, then glanced around the room. "Haven't seen any Ryn around, though."

That hardness only a wife can see came to Han's eyes, and Leia knew he had finally placed their uninvited guest.

"Droma doesn't run things anymore," Han said. Droma and Han had fallen in together for a time after the capture of Ord Mantell, then spent half a year tracking down Droma's lost Ryn clan-mates and bringing them together in a Duros refugee camp. Though Droma and his people had since vanished into space, they had given Han a focus when Leia could not and would therefore always have a warm place in her heart. "He and I parted ways nearly a year ago."

"Really?" The Weequay turned to Leia again, half leering and half appraising. "This your new captain?"

Han looked hurt. "I'm captain. She's the mate."

"You might say that." Leia glared across the table at her husband. "On a good day."

The Weequay laughed heartily, then surprised Leia by reaching under the table to lay a meaty hand on her knee. "The next time you have a bad day, come over and see me on the Sweet Surprise. I'm the mate there, but you can have any post you want."

"That's enough, Plaan. She's not looking." Han's voice was serious now. "What are you doing off Tholatin, anyway? I thought you were the security chief."

The small amount of humor Leia saw in the situation vanished. Tholatin was the home of a group of traitorous smugglers who were not above aiding the Yuuzhan Vong when the price was high enough.

"Change of jobs. Like I said, I'm first mate on the Sweet Surprise now." He removed his hand from Leia's thigh. "Reason I came over, we're short of help this run. Pay's good."

Han waited just long enough for Leia to shake her head, then raised his hand to silence her. "How good?"

"Captain," Leia interrupted. Whether it was through the Force or because of all their years together, the role he wanted her to play came to her almost instinctively. "What about that load we're waiting for?"

Han did not look at her. "It's late."

"But we've already been paid for the job." Leia was playing the role, but she was also truly irritated at being dismissed. "And you know how he is about runners who don't keep their contracts. I'd hate to see you frozen in carbonite or something."

Han winced, then took another long drink of his eyeblaster. "There's a clause," he said. "If the load's more than a day late, we pick it up later. Let's hear him out."

"Can't say much until you're in," Plaan said.

"We don't need much," Han said. "As long as it's not that refugee scam. The last thing I want is a New Republic fleet breathing down my neck."

Plaan shook his head. "No more of that. This time they get where they're going, a sweet deal for them and us. You won't believe it."

Leia slumped back and folded her arms across her ribs, doing her best imitation of an angry moll. It wasn't hard.

"How long would it take?" Han asked.

"We have to hop out and pick up the rest of our cargo," Plaan said. "Then it's a two-day run, no more."

Han looked across the table. "What do you think, Red?"

Realizing he was still probing for information, Leia said, "What about the Longshot, Miek? Are we hitchhiking back?"

"We'll drop you," Plaan said. "We'll be coming back by."

"How much?" Han asked.

"Five thousand," Plaan answered.

"Each? "Leia asked.

Plaan frowned. "For both - and that covers the docking fees for leaving the Longshot here."

Han looked to Leia. "Well?"

Leia rolled her eyes and reached for her eyeblaster.

"We'll think about it," Han said.

Plaan started to make a higher offer, then looked at Leia and changed his mind. "Don't think too long. We're pulling out in an hour."

He took his drink and left, weaving his way through the crowd toward another pair of likely looking prospects. Leia watched as he sat down and began his pitch, then she glanced up with everyone else when the electronic attention bell chimed. This time, the name Light Racer appeared above the Bith's heads.

"So, where's he going?" she asked.

"With that schedule, three possibilities," Han replied. "Kuat, Borleias, or Coruscant."

"Coruscant," Leia surmised. "Kuat and Borleias are turning away refugees. If he expects to get where he's going, it's Coruscant."

Plaan found his two crew members and stood, waving to Han and Leia as he shouldered his way toward the exit with a pair of flop-eared Ossan. Han raised his glass to the big Weequay and took a long drink, then waited until they were gone and thumbed the service pad on the table.

"Where are you going?" Leia put the emphasis on you.

"To gargle - I can't stand eyeblasters," Han replied. "And then we're going to Coruscant."

Leia remained seated. "I can't. You know how worried my brother is about his students."

The young students of Luke's Jedi academy were currently aboard the Errant Venture with Booster Terrik, jumping around the galaxy at random to prevent the Yuuzhan Vong from tracking them down. Unfortunately, in the two days since Alema Rar had awakened on Eclipse and described the attack on her sister, two more Jedi had fallen to voxyn - one on the supposedly secure world of Kuat. Concerned the Venture might stumble across one of the Jedi-killers during a supply stop, Luke had asked Han and Leia to pass Booster the coordinates of the new Jedi base at Eclipse and suggest that he resupply only from there. Booster being Booster, he was now three days overdue for his regularly scheduled rendezvous, and even Leia had to admit it seemed unlikely he meant to keep it.

"Let's wait one more day," she suggested. "The Longshot is fast. If Booster doesn't show, we can still reach Coruscant ahead of Plaan."

"Well, I'm not leaving here without you," Han sighed. "But Rogue Squadron is rotating through Coruscant right now, and Wedge owes me a favor. At least let me talk to him and make sure the Sweet Surprise receives a warm welcome."

"Wedge Antilles owes you a favor?"

"Everybody owes me a favor," Han said.

 

Booster failed to show, of course, and Wedge - General Antilles - was reluctant to order the boarding of a properly registered starship without "evidence of suspicion," in this case the presence of the complaining witness. Knowing this to be no more than an essential concession to the anti-Jedi sentiments on the Advisory Council, Leia reluctantly kept her promise to Han and informed Luke it was impossible to wait for the Errant Venture any longer. They left Nova Station and jumped into hyperspace at the Perlernian Trade Route. Han guessed they would be fast enough to beat the Sweet Surprise to Coruscant.

Han's calculations were a little off. They emerged from hyperspace to the news that Rogue Squadron was already on its way to intercept the Surprise. Wedge asked Han to meet him at Orbital Control to file a report, and Han surprised no one by promising to be there after he saw what happened with the Surprise.

Coruscant's usual aura of flickering starship light was now squeezed into a stack of luminous halos. To guard against the possibility of a Yuuzhan Vong surprise attack, the military had surrounded the planet with a shell of orbiting space mines, leaving open only a few dozen narrow travel bands - and slowing the normal traffic-storm to a crawl.

Han took the Falcon over the top of a travel band and came down within a few hundred meters of the Sweet Surprise's blocky stern, drawing an ear-popping comm squeal from the thousand-meter cargo hauler he had cut off. He reached for the comm unit to return the affront and Leia practically had to throw herself out of the Wookiee-sized copilot's seat to stop him.

"Easy, flyboy. This is no place to start a screech fight."

When Han removed his hand, she opened a private frequency to the freighter. "Sorry to cut in, Freight. There's about to be a military delay ahead. Suggest you veer port."

"Delay?" an icy Duros voice responded. "What do you call this?"

The huge freighter began to slide across the traffic band, prompting such a squall of random comm squeals that Leia had to turn down the volume.

"Who needs the military?" Han asked. "Let the Yuuzhan Vong into this traffic-storm and see how long they last."

The storm grew worse as four tiny X-wings streaked into view, then pivoted on their noses and fell in behind the Sweet Surprise. Leia scanned comm channels until she heard Gavin Darklighter's familiar voice.

"... and stand for inspection, Sweet Surprise."

"What for?" Plaan's voice replied. "We aren't violating any trade laws. We haven't even entered customs control."

"Be advised this is a New Republic military inspection." In a more reassuring voice, Gavin added, "No need to worry. It's just random."

"Random?" Plaan sounded doubtful. "I'll talk to my captain."

"Remind him we're not interested in customs regulations," Gavin said. "But we are armed."

The discussion between Plaan and his captain must have been a lively one, because the Sweet Surprise continued forward until the traffic band narrowed to a mere three hundred meters. The space mines became a tangible presence, more because of the vast swaths of darkness they occupied than because of the tiny shapes Leia occasionally saw silhouetted against Coruscant's scintillating surface. Gavin again warned the ship that his X-wings were armed and authorized to fire, and Plaan replied that the Surprise was carrying a thousand innocent refugees.

"They're not going to stop," Leia said.

Monitoring the exchange from its network of orbital weapon platforms, the Planetary Defense Force was slowly coming to the same conclusion. Over the Falcon's military comm unit, Leia listened to a series of increasingly senior officers query first Gavin Darklighter, then Wedge Antilles about what was happening. Finally, the groggy voice of General Rieekan, who had been called out of retirement to command the PDF, demanded an explanation from Han.

Han told him who Plaan was, the Weequay's refugee-selling history, and what had transpired aboard Nova Station.

"So, basically, you're telling me you've got a bad feeling about these guys?"

Han winced. "That's about it, General."

There was a crackle as the general switched comm channels, then his voice came over the unsecured channel being used between Rogue Squadron and the Surprise. "Colonel Darklighter, you know who this is?"

"General Rieekan, yes, sir."

"Good. As commander of Coruscant's Planetary Defense Force, I am ordering you not to allow the Sweet Surprise inside the mine shell. Do you understand?"

Leia looked at Han. No more than three kilometers ahead of the Falcon, traffic was already passing under the minefield. By the time Gavin responded, both Rogue Squadron and the Surprise would be between the mines.

"Uh, sir, we're already entering the safe lane."

"You have your orders, Colonel Darklighter. Rieekan out."

That was all it took. Save for the Falcon and the X-wings, every ship within ten kilometers of the Sweet Surprise began to veer away.

"What about it, Sweet Surprise?" Gavin asked. "Come to a halt and prepare for boarding."

The proper response would have been to fire a burst of braking rockets from the bow thrusters. Instead, the Surprise nosed sharply up.

"We don't want any trouble," Plaan said.

"Negative, Surprise." The voice belonged to Colonel Tycho Celchu, Gavin Darklighter's immediate superior and a veteran Rogue Squadron pilot himself. "You can't pull a flipover here. You're too long for the safe lane."

"You let us worry about that," Plaan's reply came. As he spoke, all three hundred meters of the Sweet Surprise shot straight up in front of the Falcon, then began to arc back overhead.

"Colonel?" Gavin called. "Orders?"

"Shields!" Tycho's reply came.

"Good idea," Han muttered, reaching for the controls.

Leia's hand was already bringing the glide switches up. "Full power?"

"You Jedi - always reading minds."

Leia locked the glides at maximum, then opened an intercom channel to the main hold and crew quarters. "Strap in, back there. We're about to have some fun."

The Noghri, of course, said nothing. A pair of mine rockets flared to life. The Sweet Surprise's belly laser flashed in response, and both mines erupted before they had traveled a hundred meters.

"Wormheads!" Han nosed the Falcon down.

On the military channel, Gavin called frantically, "Mine control, deactivate -"

The ten closest mines fired their rockets and streaked toward the Sweet Surprise in a funnel-shaped web of orange. The freighter's belly laser lashed out again, destroying three more mines. Another ten ignited.

"You'd think they'd learn," Leia said, struggling to cinch her crash webbing. It was still Wookiee-sized, and she almost said something about replacing it, then realized how that would sound to Han and grabbed hold in a cross-chest grip. "We should have filed the report first."

The first wave of mines blossomed into white fire against the Sweet Surprise's shields. So did most of the second. But three devices passed through the shields, their vibropoint heads penetrating the ship's durasteel walls. One erupted on the bridge, shattering the transparisteel viewing panels, spraying X-wing-sized shards down through the safe lane. A second warhead vaporized the ion drives and sent the crippled freighter tumbling down behind the Falcon. Leia did not see where the third detonated. She was distracted by several orange halos expanding above their own cockpit.

"Han -"

"I know," he said. With the Sweet Surprise falling away, the Falcon had become the largest target mass. "Just hold on. I think ..."

The halos went dark, and a half-dozen black silhouettes bounced harmlessly off the Falcon's shields.

Han finished, "... they'll deactivate."

He rolled the Falcon down after the Surprise. Leia sank into her oversized chair, then grunted as she snapped back up into her loose shoulder restraints.

Han glanced over. "This could get tricky. Dial up the inertial compensator. Tighten your crash webbing."

"It's as tight as it goes," Leia said. "I'll just hold on."

If Han heard, he was too busy to answer. They were diving through the next band of traffic.

Rogue's X-wings were spiraling after the tumbling Sweet Surprise.

Startled starships were looping in all directions, their deflector shields rubbing, forks of blue lightning dancing between their hulls. Han swerved away from a space yacht, bounced the Falcon off a particle shield, slipped between two Gallofree transports, then shot out the bottom of the traffic band.

Pilots below began to respond to Rogue Squadron's emergency warnings, and a series of gaps opened ahead of the Sweet Surprise. Leia reached out with the Force to see how many survivors there were. She felt a wave of fear that convinced her Plaan had not been lying about his hostages - and also a feral stirring, a strange sense of hungry agitation unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"Han ..."

"In a minute."

Below, a trio of X-wings were struggling to align themselves with the Sweet Surprise's center of gravity. Leia glimpsed the freighter's belly and saw where the third mine had struck. A plume of cargo and vapor streamed from the hole. The three X-wings finally arranged themselves and advanced at berthing speed, their laser cannons blasting a docking breach in the ship's hull.

The maneuver was desperate but effective, standard military protocol for entering out-of-control craft. Inside, the last pilot would seal the breach with his shields. The other two would close their vac suits and do what could be done.

The feral stirring faded, just like the stirring aboard the Nebula Chaser that Jaina and Mara had described. Leia opened a scrambled channel to Rogue Squadron.

"Colonels Celchu and Darklighter, this is Leia Solo. Your men will find more than smugglers on board. There may be a voxyn."

Han looked over wide-eyed, but she ignored him and waited.

"Copy," Gavin said. "Voxyn?"

"Yuuzhan Vong monsters, Jedi-killers," Leia explained. "Stay away from anything that looks like an eight-legged reptile. Far away. These things spit acid and screech blastwaves. Maybe they do worse."

"I'll keep that in mind. Darklighter out."

Leia looked to Han. "He went in himself?"

"First one," Han confirmed.

Han and Leia spent a nervous quarter hour following the Surprise into an unstable orbit around Coruscant. Gavin was not only Jaina's commanding officer in Rogue Squadron, he was also a good friend of Han and Leia and the cousin of Biggs Darklighter, who had died helping Luke destroy the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin. Both Solos were afraid of losing him to an accident or one of the voxyn, but trying to grab the freighter with the Falcon's tractor beam would only drag them out of control. They could do nothing but sit by while someone else performed the heroics; Leia could tell by Han's white knuckles that he found their helplessness even more frustrating than she did.

As they waited, the freighter tumbled through the last traffic band and swung into an erratic polar orbit. The PDF agreed to deactivate the appropriate sectors of the mine shell as the Sweet Surprise passed through, but the ship's trajectory would decay in forty-two minutes. With Orbital Control's rescue tractors busy cleaning up collisions the freighter had caused trying to escape, there would be no choice except to destroy the Surprise before it crashed into Coruscant. The refugees would have to be evacuated via civilian rescue or perish with the ship.

Gavin reached the backup controls in engineering and began to fire the Surprise's attitude thrusters. Orbital Control called for evacuation help and received a reply from a bulk cruiser with room for a thousand passengers.

The cruiser, a sleek fast-hauler named Steady Lady, appeared behind the Falcon and began to maneuver its five-hundred-meter body into position over the topside rescue hatch. Han dropped behind the Sweet Surprise's stern, clearly galled at having to sit back and wait for others. Leia reached out with the Force again. The passengers were near the top of the freighter, moving toward the center in a large mass. She did not sense the voxyn, but that meant nothing. Jaina and Mara had not felt Numa Rar's killer after the initial stirring.

By the time the Steady Lady began to descend toward the escape hatch, the Sweet Surprise was above Coruscant's south pole. The navicomputer showed thirty-three minutes to orbital decay - barely time, Leia hoped, to transfer a thousand frightened passengers.

Gavin Darklighter's voice came over the comm. "Leia, how'd you say to kill these things?"

"Things?" Leia echoed.

"Four," Gavin confirmed.

Han groaned.

"About a meter high, four long," Gavin continued. "Not attacking, but between us and the air lock."

Han opened a separate channel to the Steady Lady. "Hold still a minute, Lady." Not waiting for a reply, he eased the Falcon up under the larger ship's belly and started forward. "We've got to take care of a small problem."

Leia did not hear what the Lady's pilot shrieked back. She was busy on the other channel.

"Gavin, sit tight. We'll clear them for you."

"Clear them?" the reply came. "How?"

Leia looked to Han.

Han shrugged. We'll think of something, he mouthed.

Leia shot her husband a scowl, but said, "We have a plan."

The Falcon slid over the Sweet Surprise's mangled stern and shot down the narrowing cleft between the big freighters, orange tongues of rocket fire licking all around as the Steady Lady fired her braking thrusters. A loud clunk sounded from the roof, and the long-range displays went to static. Han barely looked up. He had lost the sensor dish so many times he now carried a spare; it could be plugged into the new breakaway sockets in minutes.

Leia released her crash webbing, grabbed her lightsaber, and turned to go.

"Hold on!" Han said. He was struggling to keep the Falcon from becoming a durasteel sandwich. "Where are you -"

"The docking hatch."

"Too dangerous!" Han actually looked away from the viewport. "You're staying here."

"If you like." Leia had to remind herself that Han's protectiveness was a good thing, a stage in the healing process. "You can lure the voxyn out with the Force, and I can scrape off the cannon mounts."

She gestured ahead. The gap between the Lady and Sweet Surprise could not have been much wider than the Falcon itself.

Han cringed. "Use the emergency hatch in the aft freight lift," he said. "When you draw them out, stay on this side of the air lock."

"Whatever you say, dear." Leia was already halfway down the access tunnel.

She collected the Noghri from the crew deck and went aft. Adarakh removed the floor of the freight lift, Meewalh prepared the emergency docking hatch, and Leia used the intercom to guide Han into place. The space was narrow, and they had to tip the Falcon up against the Steady Lady to slip the cofferdam over the Sweet Surprise's escape hatch. Leia could feel the voxyn below, four killers thirsty for her blood. Adarakh equalized the pressures.

A clunk echoed up through the hull. No need to draw them out. They were coming.

Leia spun toward the inner hatch, thumbed her lightsaber active. "Let's go!"

A wave of excitement rippled through the Force. A heavy body slammed into the still-sealed hatch on the Falcon's end of the cofferdam. Adarakh and Meewalh stopped and reached for their blasters.

"Come on!" Leia ordered.

She reached the hatch, hit the slap pad, heard the seal break, and exhaled in relief. Had the voxyn triggered the emergency hatch first, a decompression safety would have prevented hers from opening. Leia led Adarakh and Meewalh into the access corridor, then sealed the hold and waited.

The emergency hatch did not open.

"Leia?" Han called over the intercom. "How's it going?"

"It's not. They haven't opened the emergency hatch."

"Not a problem."

The hatch slid open to reveal a passage full of scaly black legs and wary yellow eyes. One creature extended its neck to peer into the empty hold, then withdrew and remained inside the air lock.

"Well? "Han called.

"They smell a trap."

Han was silent for a moment, then said, "Our side is airtight. I could pull away now."

Leia stood on her toes and tried to see how many voxyn were in the cofferdam, but her angle was hopeless. "No good. I need to draw them out."

"Draw them out how?" The disapproval in Han's voice could not be missed. "I'm coming back there."

"Stay put." Leia palmed the hatch open and stepped through. "Someone has to fly -"

Han yelled something over the intercom, but the voxyn were suddenly boiling out of the cofferdam, scales rattling and claws squealing. Leia brought her lightsaber around and stood fast - stood fast for about two seconds, until the third set of yellow eyes came over the rim and looked in her direction. She decided the fourth voxyn could not be far behind and used the Force to spring back through the hatchway.

Adarakh and Meewalh poured blasterfire through the door, and the lead voxyn, only three meters away, exploded into a cloud of acid vapor. Its blood reeked, like smoke and ammonia. Leia's eyes flooded with tears. She started to call the Noghri back. Bad mistake. Her lungs erupted in acid agony.

The second voxyn leapt over the first, screeching. An invisible wall slammed into Leia, and her ears rang with pain. Adarakh and Meewalh collapsed in front of her. Leia pressed herself to the wall and reached out with the Force, depressed the slap pad. The voxyn opened its mouth again, this time burping out a brown stream.

The mucus splatted against the closing hatch, but a few drops shot past and splashed the unconscious Noghri. Counting them lucky, Leia hit the lock - then cursed as the crush safety prevented the door from sealing. A round reptilian foot protruded from under the hatch, gouging at the floor. She brought her lightsaber down. The blade droned, cutting through something hard as durasteel.

A yowl came from the hold, and the voxyn stuck its muzzle under the door.

Leia hit the crush-safety override. Then, hoping one of the ship's three droid brains would not - for a change - challenge the veracity of the command, she hit it again.

The door hesitated an instant, then crunched shut on the voxyn's muzzle. Another yowl, more muffled. A caustic odor - worse than before. Six inches of scaly snout in a pool of purplish blood. Leia grew queasy, lightheaded; her lungs burned down to her knees.

She glanced up. The other two voxyn were a meter away, staring at her through the hatch viewport. They opened their mouths, and a sound like a meteor strike rang through the durasteel. She stumbled back, fell.

"Leia, what's happening back there?" Han shouted. "Answer me!"

"We've got ..." The rest was lost to coughing.

"Leia? You don't sound so -"

"No time!" Leia staggered up, vision darkening, head spinning. "Han, just ..."

It was hard to tell. She might have made it as far as go.

 

Chapter 5

Mara looked away as the hologram shifted, zooming in on the flash-frozen bodies tumbling out of the Nebula Chaser's breached hull. At the time, she and Jaina had been too busy recovering the escape pod to notice the Yuuzhan Vong attack, but she had seen the hologram too many times to want to view it again. In the privacy of her apartment on Eclipse, she had made R2-D2 play it repeatedly, trying to see some way she could have saved the refugees. After a hundred times, she had given up, convinced she could have done nothing differently - and little comforted by the knowledge.

Nom Anor's smug voice - captured by the surveillance equipment in the Bilbringi interrogation chamber - sounded from R2-D2's speakers. Mara focused on the others in the dank chamber - a hangar storeroom on the free-drifting supply base Solistation, one of a thousand anonymous rendezvous points where Jedi could meet and be gone before the Peace Brigade learned of their presence. A flash of hatred showed in Kyp Durron's cold eyes, then he clenched his still-boyish jaw and pushed his anger down into the dark pit where he stowed such emotions. The reaction of Saba Sebatyne was more difficult to read, perhaps because Mara did not know what signaled anger in the scaly face of a Barabel. With huge dark eyes, heavy brow folds, and a thin-lipped muzzle, Saba's reptilian features betrayed nothing.

Luke allowed the hologram to play itself out. By the time R2-D2's projector shut down, Kyp's outrage was a tangible thing in the Force, filling the room with a crackling energy that seemed in danger of blasting the doors off their quiet meeting place. Saba's feelings, if she had any, remained secret. Mara might have been able to probe them by reaching out with the Force, but knew how a Barabel would react to such an intrusion.

Kyp Durron surprised no one by speaking before Luke. "That wasn't my fault." He pointed at R2-D2 as though the droid had been the one threatening the refugee fleet. "I'm not responsible for what the Yuuzhan Vong do."

"Who said you were?" Luke responded mildly. "But you were running supplies to the New Plympto resistance."

Kyp nodded reluctantly. "I won't apologize. If there were Jedi doing the same thing on every -"

"Kyp, no one's asking you to apologize." Luke passed a data card to the younger Jedi. "We only came to give you our data on the voxyn and discuss how the Jedi should react to the Yuuzhan Vong threat."

"Ignore it." Kyp pocketed the data card and turned to go. "Thanks for the warning."

"Kyp, we're talking about a million people," Mara said. "The Jedi can't just ignore them."

Kyp paused at the door, but did not turn around. "What else can we do? We'd be fools to attack - they'd be waiting to wipe us out. If we surrender ... Forget it. I won't surrender."

"Neither will I," Luke said. "But now is not the time to keep harassing them. Our enemies in the senate will use this -"

"I don't care about the senate," Kyp replied. "And the Dozen are not harassing the enemy, Master Skywalker, we're killing them. More Jedi should be doing the same."

Mara was not sure whether the flash of irritation she felt was her own or her husband's. Luke was not all that fond of being called Master in the first place, and he particularly loathed it when it was used in a spirit of scorn.

Kyp palmed a touchpad on the wall. The storeroom door slid open, much to the surprise of the eleven flight-suited pilots trying to eavesdrop on the other side.

"Well?" Kyp stood in the door glaring. "Are we leaving or not?"

The pilots scattered across the hangar, running for the brand-new XJ3 X-wings - the latest and most lethal version of the venerable starfighter - scattered at the landing bay entrance. Before Kyp could follow, Mara stepped to the door and caught him by the arm.

"Kyp, no one's saying you're wrong, but it's time for the Jedi to act in concert," she said. "The Yuuzhan Vong are smart. If we keep going our own ways, they'll kill us one by one."

Kyp nodded. "I know that better than anyone." He had already lost an apprentice, Miko Reglia, to the enemy. He looked past Mara to Luke. "When the rest of you are ready to fight, I'll be there."

"And when you are ready to join the rest of us," Luke replied, "you know how to reach me."

Once Kyp passed out of earshot, Saba Sebatyne came to stand in the door and spoke in a raspy voice, "That one is trouble."

Mara turned. "So you do speak Basic." She glanced at C-3PO. "I was beginning to think we would have to ask Threepio to translate."

"Forgive this one." Saba broke into a fit of amused sissing, then struggled to add, "Jedi Eelysa taught her the wisdom of waiting."

Eelysa was a native of Coruscant, born soon after Palpatine's death and untainted by the poisons that had corrupted so many who came before her. Now a grown woman, she was one of Luke's most resourceful and trusted Jedi Knights, often living for years at a time in the wildest parts of galaxy in service to the Jedi cause. She had discovered Saba while on a long-term spying mission to Barab I, but the circumstances of her cover had prevented her from sending the Barabel to Yavin 4 to train with other Jedi students. Instead, she had taken Saba as her own apprentice, teaching her what she could of the Force before being chased off the planet by a hunting pack trying to import the human-hating doctrine of Nolaa Tarkona's Ryloth-based Diversity Alliance.

When her sissing fit finally passed, Saba rasped something in her own language that C-3PO dutifully translated as, "She also taught this one the wisdom of listening quietly."

"Yes, Eelysa has proven herself an expert in that regard many times over." Luke laughed, joining the pair at the door. "I should have known that any Jedi of hers would be full of surprises."

"This one is glad her silence did not offend you," Saba said. "The taste of Kyp Durron was not pleasing to her. How does one like him earn a new squadron of X-wingz?"

"There are some in the military who admire his courage - misplaced as it is," Luke said.

He caught Mara's eye and directed it to the motley assortment of Y-wings, Headhunters, and Howlrunners resting in a neat line beside Saba's plasma-scored blastboat. Having fought her way in from the Outer Rim only recently, Saba was not as well known as Kyp Durron or as well equipped, but her habit of keeping a low profile had attracted an entire squadron of like-minded Jedi pilots.

"The reputation of your squadron is also admired by those in a position to know," Mara said. "I'm sure the same officers who supply Kyp would happily lose a shipment in your direction."

Saba's slit pupils widened almost into diamonds. "The Wild Knightz would never dishonor the Jedi by taking such a shipment."

Mara was taken aback by the disapproval in Saba's voice, but Luke only smiled and laid a hand - his real one - on her scaly shoulder. C-3PO had warned them that such intimacies with the Barabel had been known to result in the loss of the hand, but somehow Luke's familiarity drew only an accepting curl of Saba's thick tail.

"In your hands, such a gift would do the Jedi no dishonor," Luke said. "But I'm glad to know you're concerned. Have you given any thought to Tsavong Lah's threat against the refugees, and how we will be hurt if the senate believes us insensitive to so many deaths?"

Saba looked away. "The path is not clear."

She opened her mouth as though to continue, but rippled her scales and simply stopped. Luke and Mara waited for her to continue, then shared a moment of bewilderment and reached out around them with the Force. Mara felt nothing unusual, and she could tell by Luke's puzzled reaction that he did not either.

"Saba?" Luke asked.

The Barabel turned back to Luke. "You did not feel that?"

"No," Mara said. She could sense that Saba was uneasy with her - especially after she had suggested something the Barabel considered less than honorable - but she also knew that standing quietly by would do nothing to allay that uneasiness. "And neither did Luke."

"Strange." Saba looked around for a moment, then flipped her tail in the reptilian equivalent of a shrug. "Master Skywalker, this one knowz the senate disapproves of us and otherz like us - but when are cowardz not threatened by the brave?" She glanced across the hangar to her pilots, who all stood patiently beside their battle-scarred craft. "The Jedi are few and the Yuuzhan Vong many, yet look at the forcez they direct against us: voxyn, blockades, whole hunting fleetz. We are doing something they fear, and the Force tellz this one she must continue."

Mara started to suggest that they would be more effective if they all worked together, but sensed a sudden acceptance in Luke and remained quiet.

"The Barabel are hunters," Luke said to Saba. "And hunters work best in small packs."

Saba rewarded him with a crooked grin. "Truly, Master Skywalker is as wise as Jedi Eelysa claimz. Perhaps he would honor this one with a great favor?"

Luke did not hesitate. "Of course."

She turned to Mara. "And you? This will be a burden on you, as well, and you have the new hatchling in your nest."

Mara thought of Ben and instantly felt him aboard the Shadow with Jaina and Danni, sleeping contentedly in the arms of one of the two young women. Mara would never do anything to jeopardize her baby's well-being, but she sensed the inherent trust Luke felt for this Jedi they had never met, and Mara's trust in him was such that there could be no doubt of her answer.

"Please, we Jedi must do what we can for each other," Mara said. "And we have plenty of help on Eclipse."

"Good. You may have need of it," Saba said, not smiling. She turned to C-3PO and rasped something in her own language.

"Oh my." The droid's photoreceptors lit in alarm. "Truly?"

Saba snarled something back.

"It's only an expression," C-3PO said, scurrying toward Saba's blastboat. "I wasn't calling you a liar!"

Luke and Mara exchanged curious glances, and Mara realized they also had a favor to ask of Saba. She was about to suggest this, but Luke, as usual, knew what she was thinking almost before she did.

"Saba, perhaps the Wild Knights would also do us a great service?" Luke asked. "It would mean carrying a fair amount of equipment into battle."

"And a scientist," Mara added. "It could mean the war, especially if you know where to find a yammosk war coordinator."

Mara was not sure Saba heard them. The Barabel was looking somewhere beyond their shoulders, brow folds creased deeper than ever.

"Master Skywalker, do you know where Eelysa is?"

Mara felt the growing apprehension that accompanied Luke's answer. "She's still monitoring the situation on Corellia for us."

Saba's gaze returned to Luke. "Do you think she could be in danger?"

And now Mara had a sinking feeling. As much as Luke cared for all of the academy's former students, it had been impossible to spend enough time with each one to develop the kind of bond that would connect them closely through the Force. But Eelysa had spent years training Saba one on one in a very stressful environment. It was not surprising that their bond would be an especially close one - and strong enough to inform Saba of her Master's danger.

"It's always impossible to say what Thrackan Sal-Solo and his ilk will do next," Mara said. "But we didn't expect Eelysa's mission to be dangerous. The Corellians don't even know she's there."

"Perhaps they have found out," Saba said. "Or perhaps it is something else, but Eelysa is frightened."

"Frightened?" Luke asked. He looked at Mara. "That doesn't sound like Eelysa."

Saba shook her head. "No, it does not. We will investigate once we have loaded your scientist and the equipment. There will be no trouble finding a yammosk - they come to us."

"Thank you," Luke said. "I'll have Danni start the transfer."

Luke acavated his comlink and informed Danni, who sounded happy - perhaps ecstatic was a better word - to be flying with Saba Sebatyne instead of Kyp Durron. The Shadow's cargo ramp descended, then Danni and the pilots from Saba's squadron began to transfer equipment.

In the meantime, C-3PO returned with three burly Barabels. Though a little larger than Saba, all three had the purple-green scales of young adults. There were also lightsabers hanging from their belts.

"If you please, Master Skywalker, we were on our way to Yavin Four when the war blocked us," Saba said. "Please take these young Jedi Knightz and show them the true path to becoming a Jedi. There remainz too much of the hunter in this one to teach them well."

Luke and Mara exchanged startled looks, then Mara asked, "Are these your children, Saba?"

"They are hatchmates, but only the male is of me," Saba said. "The females share a mother. One also shares a father with my own son, but of course it is impossible to say which."

The affiliations were horribly lost on the two humans, but Mara suspected they would figure it out in time. "We'll care for them as though they were our own."

Saba's eyes widened. "They are old enough to find their own food; just give them a territory. Any subbasement or scrub lot will do."

Now it was Mara's turn to be shocked. This is going to be interesting.

The slight smile that came to Luke's lips suggested he had perceived the sense of her thoughts, then Saba let out a chain of long hisses. Mara mistook the sound for the Barabel's sissing laughter - until Saba cried out in grief and dropped into a fighting crouch. Her needlelike teeth folded down into view, and she let out a long mournful growl.

Mara and Luke stepped away in unison, their hands instinctively dropping toward their lightsabers. C-3PO rasped at her in Barabel. She snarled something in reply, then dropped to all fours and crouched low. The other Barabels reacted to their Master's distress, also dropping to all fours and adding their own raspy voices to the rumble, and they all began to scratch at the durasteel floor.

Mara and Luke exchanged startled glances, then the Force grew heavy with anger and disbelief. Mara knelt beside Saba and, ignoring C-3PO's admonition not to touch a strange Barabel, laid a hand on the Jedi's back.

"Saba? What's wrong?"

The Barabel's head turned slowly toward Mara, her reptilian pupils narrowed to slits, her fangs wet with saliva.

"Eelysa," she rasped. "Something caught her."

"Something?" Luke asked.

Saba beat her tail against the ground, prompting C-3PO to explain unnecessarily that tail-banging was a typical reptilian expression of rage.

"This one doesn't know," the Barabel said. "But she is gone. Eelysa is no more."

Mara and Luke glanced across her back, each knowing without speaking what the other was thinking.

Voxyn.

 

Chapter 6

With a hologram of the strategic situation lighting the overhead darkness and dozens of tactical displays hovering in the pit below, the New Republic Defense Force Fleet Command room looked more like a galaxarium than a council chamber. The overhead display depicted the barest outlines of the galaxy, a broad ribbon of crimson marking the Yuuzhan Vong invasion route. In just two years, the aliens had cut a swath from the Tingel Arm almost to Bothan space, with three distinct salients punching through the Inner Rim at Fondor and Duro. A third offshoot, the one threatening Bilbringi, had not quite reached the Inner Rim, but Leia knew it soon would. The invaders were destroying ships faster than the New Republic could build them, and even Bilbringi did not warrant a major defense. She wondered how much importance NRMOC - the New Republic Military Oversight Committee - would place on the lives of the Talfaglion refugees. She wondered how much they could afford to.

Less than happy to find herself once again negotiating Coruscant's twisted corridors of power, Leia leaned on her son's arm and advanced along the mezzanine. Though it had been more than a day since she was knocked unconscious by the voxyn's noxious blood, she still felt the need of support when she moved - and considered herself lucky. The Noghri, who had taken the brunt of the attacks, remained in bacta tanks with severe ear and lung damage.

"This is encouraging," Jacen said. He had come to stay with her while Han returned to Eclipse with the voxyn bodies. "If they'll let us in here, our reputation in the senate can't be all that bad."

"Don't read too much into this," Leia said. "There is a reason behind the reason Borsk Fey'lya does anything. Listen with your eyes, Jacen; see with your ears."

As they advanced, Leia barely glanced at the tactical displays below the mezzanine. There was a less elaborate situation room on Eclipse - kept up to date by a secret feed from a friendly command officer - so she knew the holograms would show several dozen fleets orbiting on-station, as well as an alarming number of pitched space battles. The situation had been much the same for nearly a year, with the Yuuzhan Vong steadily widening their swath of occupied territory while their main advance remained stalled in the Corellian sector.

Leia and Jacen passed a hologram depicting the frantic work at the Bilbringi Shipyards, then a large lift rose into view from behind a minor engagement near Vortex. Borsk Fey'lya himself was on the lift, his feral Bothan features twisted into a snarl of greeting, creamy fur rippling with what Leia had long ago learned to recognize as his species' way of cringing.

"Princess Leia, you honor us."

"You could not find room on the agenda for a former chief of state to address the senate in body?" Leia demanded. With the war going badly, Fey'lya's support was slipping, and she stood to win more allies than she lost by treating him sharply. "Surely, the war isn't going that poorly?"

Fey'lya's insincere smile remained frozen on his face. "It's nice to see you recovered so soon from your fray with the Jedi-killers." He opened the gate himself - a sure sign of how tenuous his power had become. "We can certainly put you on the agenda if you wish, but NRMOC will consider your request more carefully in closed session. Please come aboard."

Leia released Jacen's arm and led the way onto the lift. They descended directly onto the committee's conferencing balcony, and Leia went straight to the speaker's rostrum. Several tiers of senators were seated in a semicircle at the opposite end.

"Thank you for coming," Fey'lya said, joining her. "And welcome to your Jedi companion, as well."

"Jacen is here as my bodyguard," Leia said, both explaining her son's presence and sidestepping any question of why the Jedi had not sent a higher-ranking member. "This has nothing to do with the Jedi. It's entirely a SELCORE matter."

"Of course," Fey'lya said agreeably. "We have studied your report. This is certainly worthy of NRMOC's attention."

Wary of the Bothan's unexpected support, Leia asked, "And?"

"And, unfortunately, this does concern the Jedi," a honeyed female voice said. "Are they not the reason the Yuuzhan Vong are holding Talfaglion hostages at all?"

Leia turned to see a slender woman with long jet-black hair rising from her seat. A sultry young senator from the shipbuilding world of Kuat, Viqi Shesh had parlayed her world's importance to the war effort into a position on the Advisory Council and several coveted bottom-tier seats on the senate's most powerful oversight committees. She had also proven an adept deal maker who traded loyalties with a facility that awed Bothans, and who did not hesitate to use her position for personal gain. Less than a year ago, as the administrating senator of the Senate Select Committee for Refugees - SELCORE - Shesh had not hesitated to strike a deal for her personal gain by diverting vital supplies from the refugee camps on Duro. Leia had been unable to marshal sufficient proof to have the woman removed from the senate, but she had created enough of a stink to have her rotated off the committee. How the unscrupulous senator had managed to win an influential - and highly secret - posting on NRMOC was a mystery, but the Kuati's opening salvo made clear that Leia had made a powerful enemy for both herself and the Jedi.

Drawing on the Force for strength - and patience - Leia met the senator's gaze evenly. "The Yuuzhan Vong have threatened to destroy the convoy unless the Jedi surrender, yes. Were the Jedi to do so, I have no doubt the Yuuzhan Vong's next demand would be the surrender of Kuat Drive Yards."

"It has never been the New Republic's policy to yield to coercion," Fey'lya said, deftly cutting off the argument before it started. "The question is, what can we do without surrendering?"

"I submit there is nothing we can do." Shesh looked to Fey'lya. "If we can see the Corellian sector?"

The Bothan used a remote to send the command, and the holo rotated to display the appropriate sector. The Corellian system was surrounded by a shell of New Republic frigates, the ones on the Duro side glowing slightly brighter to show they were lightly engaged against a wall of enemy probe ships facing them. Talfaglio was encircled by a swarm of Yuuzhan Vong corvette-analog patrol craft, with a single cruiser centrally positioned to provide support. But it was the Jumus system that was most alarming. Just a short hyperspace jump from either Corellia or Talfaglio, it was now home to much of the fleet that had captured Duro.

"As you can see, the Yuuzhan Vong are hoping we'll try to break their blockade." Shesh pointed to the all-too-small cluster of capital ships orbiting Corellia. "The moment we move, they'll sweep in and grab the prize."

"Not if we come the back way," Jacen said. He pointed above their heads, tracing a route along the edge of the Deep Core into the back of the sector. "If we sneak three Star Destroyers along here, we can wipe out their blockade and be gone with the convoy before they can react."

"Now that would teach them to take hostages," Kvarm Jia, a gray-bearded senator from Tapani sector, said. "Where can we find the Star Destroyers?"

"Yes, where do we find three expendable Star Destroyers?" Shesh echoed, quick to turn Jia's support on its head. "Or do you suggest sacrificing yet another world to Jedi ineptitude?"

A pair of senators began to speak at the same time, realized they were on opposite sides of the issues, and immediately tried to talk over each other. Fey'lya called for order, only to be shouted down by senators from the anti-Jedi coalition, who were in turn shouted down by Jia's supporters. Soon, all the senators on the balcony were bellowing at once.

Jacen looked over at Leia and shook his head in dismay. More accustomed to the rancorous nature of republican politics, Leia occupied herself with counting heads and quickly realized the committee was split almost down the center. She borrowed Jacen's lightsaber - she had left her own behind, hoping to emphasize that she was appearing on SELCORE's behalf and not as a Jedi - then turned to Fey'lya.

"If I may?" She nearly had to shout to make herself heard.

The Bothan nodded - and stepped back. "By all means."

Leia ignited the blade, its brilliance and distinctive snap-hiss bringing the tumult to an instant silence. Suppressing a smile at this reminder of the continuing power of the Jedi, she thumbed the blade off.

"Please forgive the theatrics." Leia returned the weapon to her son. "In appearing before you, it was not my intention to cause such discord in NRMOC. That's the last thing the Republic needs. Perhaps the committee should simply vote on Jacen's suggestion and be done with it."

"Vote wow?" Shesh's eyes narrowed. "So you and your son can use your Jedi mind tricks?"

Leia forced a tolerant smile. "Those tricks work only on the weak of will - which I can assure you no one on this committee is."

The joke drew a tension-draining laugh from both camps, and Jia mocked, "Unless you're afraid of losing, Senator Shesh?"

"It would not be I who lose, Senator Jia, it would be the New Republic," Shesh said. "But let us vote, by all means."

Fey'lya went to his dais and authorized the vote, and the balcony's droid brain announced the results almost before the last senator had keyed his voting pad. As Leia had expected, the resolution passed with a bare two-vote majority - not enough to authorize the action without the full senate's approval, but enough for Fey'lya to use his authority under the military secrets act to bypass the security risk of a full senate vote and "declare" the necessary majority. Given the deference he had shown Leia earlier, she expected him to do just that.

Uneasy at finding herself in debt to a Bothan, she turned to Fey'lya. "Will you declare the majority, Chief Fey'lya? This is your chance to save a million lives."

Fey'lya's fur rippled again, betraying just how weak his position as chief of state had become. "A chance to save a million - or lose billions."

"What?" Leia was astonished at the ire in her own voice. Perhaps it was because of her fatigue, or perhaps because of her surprise at having miscalculated so badly, but she found herself struggling to hold back a string of invectives on the tip of her tongue. "Chief Fey'lya, the plan is a sound one -"

Fey'lya raised a placating hand. "And I haven't said no. But you must know what the loss of three Star Destroyers would mean to us. We could lose another dozen planets." He stroked the creamy tufts on his cheek, then spoke in a deliberately thoughtful voice. "I will ask the military for a study."

"A study?" Jacen burst out. "The convoy will be drifting slag by the time they finish!"

"I'm sure General Bel Iblis will expedite matters," Fey'lya said evenly. "In the meantime, we'll stall."

"Stall?" In her weakened state, Leia did not trust herself to keep a civil tone. She knew Garm Bel Iblis, who like Wedge Antilles had been reactivated at the outbreak of the war, would move as quickly as possible. But even he could push the plodding command bureaucracy along only so fast, and there was no guarantee that he would reach the conclusion she hoped for. "How can you stall the Yuuzhan Vong?"

Fey'lya flashed a snarl she was sure he meant as reassuring. "We'll ask Tsavong Lah for an envoy to discuss the matter."

"An envoy?" Jia shouted the question. "It will look like we're asking for terms!"

Fey'lya's ears pricked mischievously forward. "Precisely, Senator - and it will buy time." The Bothan was quick to look back to Leia. "But rest assured, Princess. Whatever General Bel Iblis's conclusion, we shall tell the envoy only this: that Yuuzhan Vong threats merely strengthen the ties between the New Republic and her Jedi."

Jia actually grinned. "A point that will be underscored when we rescue the hostages."

"Or even if we must let them die," Shesh added. She nodded her approval. "I believe we have a consensus, Chief Fey'lya."

The consensus only angered Leia more, for she had worked with Borsk Fey'lya long enough to know that his plans served only himself; whatever he intended to say to the Yuuzhan Vong, she felt sure that he would not allow the Jedi to stand in the way of making an accommodation that would save his own position.

"What you have, Senators," she said icily, "is a consensus of fools."

"Mother?"

Leia felt Jacen reach out to her through the Force, laving her with soothing emotions, and she realized how young he really was. The New Republic Senate was far from the unblemished body he imagined, and the good-faith compromises described in C-3PO's civics lessons were all too rare. The senate was a power-grubbing club of people who too often saw their duty in terms of their own interests, who measured their success by how long they held office, and it made Leia ashamed to think she had played such a prominent role in its founding. She spun on her heel and would have stepped into the lift's gate - perhaps even flipped over it - if not for a gentle telekinetic tug from her son.

To cover for herself, she reached for the gate and said, "I have wasted all the time I care to with NRMOC."

Borsk Fey'lya stepped in front of her. "You really have no reason to be upset, Princess. General Bel Iblis's integrity is beyond question."

"It is not Garm's integrity I question, Chief."

Leia used the Force to open the gate behind Fey'lya, then brushed him aside and stepped onto the lift. Jacen came to her side, one hand ready to catch her at the first sign of weakness.

When they reached the mezzanine and started for the exit, he asked, "Was that wise? We have enough enemies in the senate."

"Jacen, I'm done with the senate. Again."

As Leia spoke, an unexpected calmness came to her. She began to feel stronger and less weary, more at harmony with herself, and she knew her words had been more than the usual frustration with politicians. She had lost control with Fey'lya not because she was weak and tired - though she was - but because she no longer belonged in the halls of power, no longer believed in the process that placed selfish bureaucrats in positions of power over those they were sworn to serve. The Force was guiding her, telling her the New Republic had changed, the galaxy had changed, most of all she had changed. She had stepped onto a new path, and it was time that she realized it and stopped trying to follow the old one.

Leia took Jacen's arm and, in a more peaceful voice, said, "I'll never appear before them or their committees again."

Jacen remained silent, but his distress and concern were as thick in the Force as the air over a Dagobah swamp. Leia wrapped an arm around his waist and, surprised as always at how far her nineteen-year-old son now towered above her, pulled him close.

"Jacen, sometimes it can be dangerous to assume the best about people," she said quietly. "Borsk is our worst enemy in the senate, and he just proved it."

"He did?"

They left the committee room and started down the familiar corridor. "Think," Leia said. "The reason behind the reason. Why would Borsk want to talk to a Yuuzhan Vong envoy? What can he bargain with?"

Jacen walked a few silent steps, then stopped when the answer finally struck him. "Us."